The minister said monetisation of 105 identified stretches, as per the current trend, could fetch about Rs 1.5 lakh crore.
"I am happy to say that the first bundle of nine projects totalling a length of 680 km was over-subscribed...We had estimated to fetch Rs 6,258 crore from monetisation of these projects but we will get Rs 10,500 crore from these," Road Transport and Highways Minister Gadkari said.
"We have come out with a TOT model. We have decided to monetise 105 projects under this. In the first bundle of nine projects, we had invested about Rs 855 crore. We had estimated to fetch Rs 6,258 crore from monetisation of these, but instead we got much higher," the minister said.
He said that now the government was devising some strategy so that apart from big foreign and domestic investors, it could rope in some small investors.
Also Read
Rohit Singh, member of finance department at the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), told PTI that the second bundle of about 10 projects was being finalised for auction under TOT and this time the government was expecting even a better response.
He said the government was targetting USD 1 billion of funds from the second tranche of auction which could go even higher given the current trend.
The first bundle for monetisation, released by NHAI in October 2017 covers 9 stretches five highways running across Andhra Pradesh and four in Gujarat. The government had assessed the asset condition through drone videos and network survey vehicles.
The Cabinet in 2016 had authorised NHAI to monetise public funded National Highway projects. 75 operational NH projects completed under public funding had been identified for potential monetisation using the TOT Model.
TOT model in India has been developed to encourage private participation in the highways sector.
The model, as per officials, addresses the risks associated with such a long concession contract and there are multiple provisions in the model concession agreement, which are designed to take care of eventualities like roadway expansion, high toll traffic variation etc to ensure that concessionaires are not exposed to undue risks.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content