ICRA has said that NHAI’s monetisation drive could fetch around INR 60,000 crore in FY25. Similarly, India Ratings & Research has said that the government has identified 53 projects, valued at INR 2 lakh crore, which will be bid out in the coming years. These projects will be bid out on build-operate-transfer (BOT) contracts, norms for which were tweaked last year.
“The idea behind bringing in revised norms for BOT projects was to increase the level of private participation in the sector and keep NHAI’s debt level in check,” Rishabh Jain, Associate Director, India Ratings & Research said.
He added that the share of BOT, in the overall project mix, will increase during the current financial year and the same would rise steadily over the next few years.
The reason behind tweaking the BOT norms was the exit of big size companies in the sector over delayed return on investment (ROI), rigid concessionaire agreements and legal disputes with the government.
Meanwhile, ICRA estimates a monetisation potential of INR 53,000 – 60,000 crore from the sale of the 33 road assets through the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) and Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) modes, which could translate into a INR 38,000-43,000 crore lending opportunity for banks/ capital markets.
Moreover, ICRA expects that MoRTH could achieve up to 71% of its monetisation target of INR 1.6 lakh crore under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) by end FY2025.
Ashish Modani, Vice President and Co-Group Head, Corporate Ratings, ICRA, said “Over the last six years, the NHAI has monetised 29 assets across 10 TOT bundles with valuation multiples ranging between 0.44 times to 0.93 times, realizing INR 42,334 crore so far.”
Under the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), road sector monetisation was expected to account for INR 1.6 lakh crore, viz. 27% of total monetisation during FY2022-FY2025.
By the end of FY2024, the NHAI (together with MoRTH) had realized around INR 0.53 lakh crore (33%) across the two modes for monetising its assets, i.e., TOT and InvIT, ICRA said.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
