Bhubaneswar: The Union Cabinet approved five different projects including two economic corridors in Odisha under the Bharatmala Pariyojana, country's biggest ever road construction and expansion programme.
The projects cleared by the union government for Odisha include a Multimodal Logistic Park at Jagatsinghpur, two economic corridors - Sambalpur-Paradip and Sambalpur-Ranchi along with two ring roads in Bhubaneswar and Sambalpur.
Sources informed that the two economic corridors will help in expediting trade and commerce through efficient transportation of industrial materials. Similarly, the multimodal logistic park will act as a model programme to reduce logistics costs, help in freight aggregation and establish good material handling infrastructure.
Through the Bharatmala project, Sambalpur denizens will greatly benefit from the highway development and expansion in future.
The Centre on Tuesday gave a green signal to the ambitious programme which aims is to improve infrastructure, bring about faster transportation and generate employment.
The umbrella project involves construction of 83,677 km roads at an investment of Rs 6.92 lakh crore.
The centre aims to push economic development to a new level by laying 34,800 km of highways at the cost of Rs 5.35 lakh crore under the new project and also plug the loopholes in National Highways Development Project (NHDP) programme which earlier served as the country's flagship road construction and expansion programme.
The project entails development of 44 economic corridors, construction of Ring roads in 28 cities, 35 logistic parks and 700 roadside amenities across the country.
The highway construction programme will help in generating at least 14.2 crore man-days of employment across the country over the next five years, informed sources.