INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Government plans to monetise highways and raise Rs 85,000 crore till 2024-25Aiming to generate funds to propel the economy, the Centre plans
to monetise several of its big-ticket infrastructure across sectors in the next five years under its Asset Monetisation Programme
Under this, it aims to generate Rs 85,000 crore from the highways sector alone by 2024-25.While around Rs 10,250 crore worth of highways
were to be monetised in 2020-21 (though the target could not be achieved), in 2021-22 the Government plans to monetise Rs 10,000 crore of
Similarly, the target for 2022-23 is Rs 20,000 crore, for 2023-24 the aim is to generate Rs 20,000 crore by monetisation, while for 2024-25
the objective is to generate Rs 24,750 crore through monetising highways.In 2020-21 till January 31, 2021, the Ministry of Road Transport
and Highways had managed to monetise 566 km of roads worth Rs 5,011 crore through the ToT route.Highways under this plan, are to be
monetised through the Toll Operate Transfer (ToT) or the Infrastructure Investment Trusts or InvIT route.While under InvITs, the land assets
are transferred to a trust providing investment opportunity for institutional investors, in the ToT model, public funded projects which are
operational for two years, are put up for bidding.What is ToT model?In 2016, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) authorised
National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to monetise public funded national highway projects and approved the ToT model
Under this model, public funded projects, operational for two years, are put up for bidding, wherein the right of collection and
appropriation of fee is assigned for a predetermined concession period (30 years) to concessionaires (developers or investors) against the
efficient operation and maintenance (O-M) framework which would reduce NHAI's involvement in projects post construction completion.Also
the model will help in utilisation of the corpus (generated from proceeds of such project monetisation) by the Government to meet fund
kickstarting this model was to facilitate efficient toll realisation through private sector and to create new business opportunities.
