Punj Lloyd to bid for 25 highways next year

Infrastructure major Punj Lloyd today said it will bid for up to 25 national highway projects, valued at an estimated Rs 40,000 crore, in the next one year. "We will bid for 20-25 large national highway projects which will be minimum Rs 1,000 crore order (each)... Overall the order size could be about Rs 40,000 crore," Punj Lloyd chairman Atul Punj said on the sidelines of CII summit here. The company is currently executing seven highway projects across the country, he added. "As and when the tenders will keep flowing, we will bid for the project. The bidding of these 20-25 projects will probably happen in the next one year," he said. When asked about company's exposure in West Asia in view of the Dubai crisis, Punj said about 30 per cent of its unexecuted orders, mostly belonging to oil and gas sector, are from that region and north Africa. "We are unaffected by the Dubai crisis and West Asia does not mean only Dubai. We will keep working in the region," he said. The company's current unexecuted order book stands at $5.5 billion, of which 30 per cent belongs to South Asia, West Asia and India each, and 10 per cent from the rest of the world