New Delhi, Apr 20 (IANS): The government on Wednesday said it has set a target of 25,000 km of national highways to be built during 2016-17 -- up from 10,000 km in 2015-16.

"Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has fixed a 2.5 times increase in the target for award and construction of national highways for the year 2016-17," the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement.

"Encouraged by the good performance of his ministry in 2015-16, Gadkari expressed confidence that the pace of development that was established last year will result in even better outcomes during the current year."

According to the ministry, a construction target of 15,000 km is set during the fiscal year under review from 6,000 km constructed last year.

The ministry stated that out of the total length of national highways targeted for award, 15,000 km would fall under the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).

The remaining 10,000 km will be under the purview of the ministry and National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL).

"NHAI’s target for construction has been fixed at 8,000 km, while for the ministry and NHIDCL, the target is 7,000 km," the statement said.

The ministry said 2015-16 has had many positive outcomes such as construction of 6,000 km of national highways, which marked a year-on-year increase of nearly 36 percent.

"The speeding up of road projects has been made possible due to several policy interventions which include the Ministry being empowered to decide mode of delivery, increased threshold for project approval, enhanced inter-ministerial coordination exit policy," the statement noted.

Other policy interventions included promoting innovative project implementation models like Hybrid Annuity Model and amendments to the Model Concession Agreement (MCA) for build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects.