India: local-content preference margin in NHAI Maharashtra & Goa Division road-works tender (INR 94.57 crore)

Mechanism

The legal instrument is the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade's (DPIIT) Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 (as amended, Order No. P-45021/2/2017-B.E.-II), which mandates a bid-evaluation preference margin (ordinarily a 20% purchase-preference margin over a 50% minimum local-content threshold) for "Class-I local supplier" bidders across central-government procurement, including NHAI infrastructure contracts. This filing records one instance of that standing order applied to a specific tender: an NHAI Maharashtra & Goa Division Request for Proposal for road-works maintenance (tender ref. MHDIV-24/14/2025-Maharashtra & Goa Division), valued by GTA at INR 94.57 crore, targeting firm-specific preferences in civil-engineering, general-construction, and engineering-services categories. GTA's MAST classification is "M: Government procurement restrictions," inward-affecting, with national-level implementation despite the state-level tender scope. GTA's underlying description, affected-sector detail, and affected-trading-partner list sit behind an account-gated view; the tender reference and RFP nature were confirmed from the public state- act summary page.

Severity is set low (2), consistent with the companion NHAI Jharkhand (Kutchery Chowk–Piska More PBMC) and NHIDCL Mawlyngkhung–Panchgram filings from the same GTA batch: this is a routine, standing domestic-preference policy applied within a single road-works maintenance contract, not a new trade barrier. It shifts bid- evaluation weighting toward Class-I local suppliers without outright excluding foreign bidders.

Downstream implications

• Foreign civil-engineering, road-maintenance, and

engineering-services contractors bidding into NHAI Maharashtra tenders face a structural scoring disadvantage relative to Class-I local suppliers, consistent with India's Atmanirbhar Bharat procurement posture.

• This is another instance of the large recurring class of GTA-logged

Indian NHAI/NHIDCL/state-PWD road tenders carrying the same Preference-to-Make-in-India margin (see also the Jharkhand, Mawlyngkhung–Panchgram, and Tamil Nadu road filings from the same GTA batch) — individually low severity, but cumulatively indicative of how systematically India applies domestic preference across its national-highway maintenance and construction pipeline.

Open questions

• Full tender scope (route/section, contract term, estimated cost per

the underlying NIT) was not independently confirmed — GTA's affected-sector and affected-partner detail sit behind an account-gated view. Confirm against NHAI's e-procurement portal (MHDIV-24/14/2025) if higher precision is needed.

• Exact local-content percentage threshold applied to the Class-I

designation for this specific tender was not independently confirmed against the full RFP document.