The National Highways Authority of India has drawn up a tentative list of 17 highway projects, spanning 1,692.5 km, for monetisation in the current financial year, as the government pushes ahead with its asset recycling programme for road infrastructure.
The projects, spread across nine states, are proposed to be monetised through the Toll-Operate-Transfer (TOT) and Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) routes, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement.
What’s on the list
The identified stretches cover highways in Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Maharashtra. The authority has described these as economic and logistics corridors with established traffic volumes and strategic connectivity value.
Notably, the list does not include assets that NHAI proposes to monetise through the Raajmarg Infra Investment Trust, or RIIT, in FY27, meaning the total pipeline for the year is likely larger than the 17 projects announced so far.
Why the early announcement
The ministry said the early release of the list is intended to give institutional investors and bidders enough lead time to plan their capital deployment. It is a departure from past practice, where project lists were often announced closer to the actual bidding process.
“The exercise is expected to enable investors and bidders to plan investments in a more efficient manner,” the ministry said.
The monetisation target
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has set a monetisation target of Rs 30,000–35,000 crore for FY27. In FY26, the target was Rs 30,000 crore, against which NHAI realised Rs 28,307 crore. Final FY26 receipts came in at Rs 29,000 crore, according to the ministry.
Last year’s proceeds came from a mix of instruments, TOT Bundles 17 and 18, as well as public and private InvIT rounds, including InvIT Round 5.
The broader strategy
The monetisation of operational highway assets has, over the past few years, become a core part of how NHAI funds new construction. Toll roads that are already built and generating revenue are packaged and transferred to private operators or listed trusts, freeing up capital that NHAI can redeploy into greenfield projects.
The government has positioned TOT and InvIT frameworks as its preferred instruments for attracting long-term institutional money like pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and infrastructure-focused investors into the highway sector.