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India plans to expand its high-speed road network fivefold within a decade, investing 11tn rupees ($125bn) to modernise infrastructure and slash logistics costs, people familiar with the matter said.The country will add 17,000 kilometres (10,563 miles) of access-controlled roads that allow motorists to travel at speeds of up to 120 kilometres per hour, offering faster, safer and more efficient connectivity than conventional highways, said the people, who asked not to be identified citing rules.Roughly 40% of the proposed network is already under construction and slated for completion before 2030, while work on the remaining corridors is expected to begin by 2028 and wrap up by 2033, the people said.India’s push mirrors efforts by other major economies to overhaul transport infrastructure and reduce logistics cost. China has built more than 180,000 kilometres of expressways since the 1990s, while the US maintains over 75,000 kilometres of interstate highways.As of March this year, India’s national highway network covered more than 146,000 kilometres, but only 4,500 kilometres meet high-speed standards, the people said.The Indian government wants to reduce logistics costs from 13% to 14% of the gross domestic product to about 8%, in line with global standards, consultancy Rubix Data Sciences Pvt said in a report last year. Although India’s expressway plan is relatively small in scale, it stands out for its ambitious timeline and reliance on a hybrid financing model to attract private capital.Projects offering returns of 15% or more will be bid out under the build-operate-transfer, or BOT, model, allowing private firms to recover costs through tolls, the people said. Those with lower projected returns will follow the Hybrid Annuity Model, under which the government covers 40% of construction costs upfront, they said.Most of the projects in various stages of construction are under the hybrid annuity model, but the government now hopes to see more private sector participation for the rest, the people said. Private interest in India’s road sector has been tepid in recent years.India’s Ministry for Road Transport and Highways and the government’s Press Information Bureau didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments.The country’s highway network is undergoing an upgrade led by the state-run National Highways Authority of India, which spent a record 2.5tn rupees on construction in the fiscal year ended March, up 21% from a year ago.For the year ending March 2026, the government has increased the budgeted allocation to 2.9tn rupees for roads and highways.Although interest in India’s roads sector has been uneven, the broader infrastructure space is drawing strong investor attention.Brookfield Asset Management Ltd, Blackstone Inc, Macquarie Group Ltd, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board have all committed capital, while the Adani Group has announced plans to invest $18.4bn across infrastructure, including roads.The country could attract hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investment over the next three years, driven by policy support, rising demand, and the scale of planned projects, according to Deloitte India estimates.

Dubai-based logistics company DP World Ltd is negotiating for a contract to operate a new container terminal that will increase the Montreal Port Authority’s capacity by more than 50%.The new Contrecoeur terminal will sit on the St. Lawrence River, just northeast of the city of Montreal, Canada’s second-largest urban area. Construction may start as soon as September on the project, which is expected to cost nearly C$1.6bn ($1.2bn) and has a target date for completion in 2029.“There’s a competitive process going on and we’re definitely in discussions,” DP World Canada Inc Chief Executive Officer Douglas Smith told Bloomberg News.DP World is one of the world’s largest opera-tors of container ports, and it has a strong link to Quebec — the Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec is among its largest financial partners. La Caisse holds stakes in several DP assets, including 45% of the Canadian subsidiary.The terminal project has been under consideration since the 1980s, when the port authority bought the land in Contrecoeur, and has been the subject of detailed planning for a dozen years. Costs ballooned and demand fluctuated, but the governments of Canada and Quebec now want to see it built as part of efforts to in-crease trade with Europe amid trade tensions with the US — committing more than half a billion dollars to the project.“It checks a lot of boxes,” Charles Emond, chief executive officer of La Caisse, said in an interview. “This is something that would be considered strategic in Quebec. We like infrastructure, we’re good in ports, we have expertise, we have the operator.”The Port of Montreal’s current capacity of 2.1mn containers annually may be fully reached by 2030, and the new terminal would be able to handle 1.15mn containers of volume.A spokesperson for DP World in Canada said that “while we see strong potential for developing logistics infrastructure in Montreal that drives economic growth and long-term value, we have no announcements to share at this time.” Prime Minister Mark Carney promoted the Contrecoeur terminal project this week during a press conference, along with a potential port expansion in Churchill, Manitoba, that might eventually be able to export liquefied natural gas.“The No. 1 focus of this government is to build that infrastructure, and particularly infrastructure that helps us deepen our partnership with our European partners,” Carney told reporters in Germany.The Montreal Port Authority has said the trade war with the US led companies to reassess ex-port markets in the first half of the year, with 22% more goods going to China during the period. Exports to Spain and northern Europe also rose.“The expansion of the Port of Montreal in Contrecoeur is a major strategic asset for in-creasing the resilience and fluidity of supply chains throughout Eastern Canada. In this perspective, we are currently in discussions with a private partner and investor, whose identity will remain confidential until an agreement is signed,” said Renee Larouche, director of communications with the Montreal Port Authority.Montreal is Canada’s biggest eastern container port and its second-largest overall, after Vancouver.