The second attempt by the National Highways Authority of India for monetisation of two bundles of operational highway projects have brought in bids that are in aggregate Rs 550 crore higher than in an earlier round that was cancelled.
Cube Highways bid is the highest at Rs 2156 crore for highway stretch that has been grouped under Bundle 11. In the first attempt Cube had bid Rs 1850 crore for the same stretch. Other bidder in the fray for the toll operate transfer (TOT) Bundle 11 that includes Allahabad bypass of total length of Rs 87 km was Oriental Structural Engineers.
For ToT Bundle 12, IRB Infrastructure emerged as the highest bidder with Rs 4428 crore offer. Another contender for the 316.8 km highway stretch from Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh to Lakhnadon in Madhya Pradesh was KKR’s Highways Infrastructure Trust. In the first attempt the highest bid for this bundle had come at Rs 4181 crore.
Thus, the highest bids for highways grouped in ToT Bundle 11 and ToT Bundle 12 have come in at Rs 6584 crore as against Rs 6031 crore received in the first round. As the financial bids were lower than the expectation the first time around, the National Highways Authority of India had cancelled the process and invited fresh bids in September.
The bids have to be approved by the government under which the NHAI functions and if it goes through it will be the first case of asset monetisation for NHAI in this financial year. The National Monetisation Pipeline has a target of Rs 1.6 trillion for monetisation of highways till end of 2024-25 of which only Rs 61058 crore has been raised since 2018-19.
Asset monetisation is one of the priority programmes for the government to raise resources for ever increasing demand for funds to rapidly scale up India;s infrastructure.
Under the ToT model of highway monetisation the winning bidder gets the right to collect toll on highways built by the NHAI for a specified period in lieu of upfront payment.
The process for monetisation of two more bundles of highways ToT 13 and 14 are parallelly underway and last date for bids for the two highway stretches is October 31.
Bundle 13 includes Kota Bypass and Cable stay bridge on NH 76 in Rajasthan & Gwalior Jhansi section and a section of NH-75 (New NH 44) in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Total length of highways in this bundle is 110 km.
In Bundle 14 are housed two of the most lucrative sections of national highways, Delhi-Meerut Expressway of 60 km and Delhi Hapur section of 50 km. It also includes a highway stretch in Odisha on Binjabahal Teleibani section.
This financial year only highways under ToT bundle 11,12,13 and 14 would be monetised which could bring in Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 crore. Similar amount is expected by monetisation through National Highways Infrastructure Trust. Rest of the target of Rs 45,000 crore through monetisation in this financial year will be through asset-backed securitisation.