Adani Road Transport, IRB Infrastructure are learnt to be among the four firms have bid to acquire the operational highway projects of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under the Toll Operate Transfer (TOT) model for monetisation.
The other two companies in the fray are Epic Concesiones backed by Edelweiss Alternatives and Prakash Asphalting and Toll Highways (PATH).
The 124 km of highways are offered in ToT Bundle 15. The four lane highway starts from Trichy to Madurai and Tovrankurichi in Tamil Nadu. On successful completion of the transaction, it will be the second monetisation by NHAI in 2024-25.
In September it had raised Rs 6661 crore through monetisation of highways that were part of ToT Bundle 16. The highways in this bundle included two stretches on Hyderabad-Nagpur corridor in Telangana.have a total length of 251 km.
The concession period of the TOT bundle is for 20 years in which a concessionaire will be required to maintain and operate the stretch. In lieu of this, the concessionaire will collect and retain user fees for the stretch in accordance with prescribed fee rates under National Highways Fee Rules.
In FY 2023-24, NHAI awarded Four TOT bundles worth Rs. 15,968 crores against the monetization target of Rs.10,000 crores for that fiscal.
In line with the National Monetization Plan, NHAI’s Total Asset Monetization Program has crossed Rs.1 trillion which includes Rs. 48,995 Crore through TOT, Rs. 25,900 Crore through InvIT and Rs. 42,000 Crore through Securitization. Bids for highways in ToT bundles 17, 18 and 19 are still open.
This year the highway builder expects to raise Rs 54.000 crore from monetisation of operational roads, which is much higher than Rs 40,227 achieved last year. Of the FY 25 target, Rs 8,000 will come from project based financing and Rs 46,000 crore from ToT and National Highways Infra Trust (NHIT).
The highway builder has identified 33 highway stretches of 2741 km that will be offered in the monetisation drive. Of the 33 highways, 12 have been offered to NHIT which is promoted by NHAI. Monetisation through NHAI is expected to bring in Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 crore. The remaining 21 will be monetised through ToT.