After achieving the target for the first year rather comfortably, the Centre’s ambitious National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) may miss the goal in FY23 by a wide margin as the railways, telecom and petroleum sector slip on their goals.
As against the FY23 NMP target to generate Rs 1.62 trillion in revenues and investments, officials indicted that the shortfall could be about Rs 50,000 crore.
Railways, which is the biggest component of the Rs 6 trillion NMP in the four years through FY25, telecom and petroleum sectors are seen the worst performers while mining would be doing the heavy lifting for the second consecutive year. “With the end-of-the-year position not looking good, the railways’ target has been reduced to about Rs 30,000 crore for FY23 fromRs 57,222 crore while the target for “coal and other mining” have been increased to about Rs 37,500 crore from Rs 6,060 crore,” an official told FE.
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Coal and other mining had yielded upfront revenues and capex to the tune of Rs 58,000 crore in FY22 against the target of Rs 3,394 crore. In FY23 also, the actual achievement of the coal and other mines monetisation by way of revenues in upfront premium, annual royalties and investment by private players are expected to be higher than the revised target. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has asked officers to find out from different ministries how much they would achieve and whether the shortfalls would covered next year or not and the reasons for not meeting targets.Last year, a sum of about Rs 1 trillion was raised through the monetisation route as against the target of Rs 88,200 crore thanks to mining sector.
Railways collected just Rs 800 crore via monetisation through redevelopment of one railway station and some railway colonies in the last fiscal year as against the target of Rs 17,810 crore. According to the NMP, railways need to monetise 120 stations, 30 trains and 1,400 km track, among others in FY23. But, it has achieved little so far.Officials are concerned that other ministries are taking a leaf from railways non performance and doing little for the cause of asset recycling to generate a much needed investment cycle.
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As against the target of Rs 20,180 crore, the department of telecom has not been able to monetise any of the telecom assets so far and doubts have emerged if it could achieve anything. The original plan was to mobilise Rs 15,780 crore by inviting private investors to bid for Bharat Broadband Network’s 300,000 km of optical fibre networks to upgrade, operate and maintain across the country, including states. Now, that has been put on the backburner. Another Rs 4,400 crore was estimated from BSNL/MTNL tower monetisation through rent-operate-transfer (ROT) concession model, but bids are yet to be called for these.