The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has brought down its cost of collecting toll by Rs 2,062 crore or 43.5% in 2024-25 through timely bidding and ensuring the maximum contracts for one-year duration are awarded and Short-term contracts of three months are minimized.
The highway builder has also increased efficiency of toll collection through close monitoring of current contracts and deletion of provision for deemed extension of 3 months, according to a statement by the highway builder.
In 2024-25 the total cost of toll collection came down to Rs 2,674 crore from Rs 4,736 crore in 2023-24.
In percentage terms, the cost of toll collection decreased to 9.27% of gross receipts in 2024-25 from 17.27% in 2023-24. The ‘cost of toll collection’ is the difference between the toll fee collected by the tolling agencies and the amount remitted to NHAI at public funded toll plazas.
In 2024-25 the toll agencies collected a total of about Rs 28,823 crore as toll-fee, out of which around Rs. 26,149 crore were remitted to NHAI whereas In 2023-24, total toll collected by the toll agencies amounted to Rs 27,417 crore, out of which about Rs. 22,681 crore were remitted to NHAI.
In addition, measures were taken to drastically reduce short term three-month contracts, limiting only three premature termination requests during a financial year and restricting the same contractor in the bidding of Toll Plaza for which he has submitted the premature termination request.
Also, NHAI has been regularly engaging with the ‘All India User Fee Collection Federation’ to address issues and challenges faced by the toll collection agencies to build confidence and increase participation in toll bids.
Timely release of performance security (cash part) and Bank Guarantees of the toll collection agencies further enhanced their bidding capabilities resulting in higher bids amounts.
Apart from this, to avoid any windfall gains to the toll collection agencies, a ‘Windfall Gain’ clause was also introduced in the agreements, under which the contract of the toll collection agency can be terminated if the moving average of toll collection in last 15 days is more than 40 percent of the remittance paid to NHAI.