Govt to launch national monetisation pipeline for potential brownfield infra assets

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said the government will launch a national monetisation pipeline for potential brownfield infrastructure assets in order to fuel new construction.Sitharaman announced this while presenting 2021-22 Budget in Parliament.Monetising operating public infrastructure assets is a very important financing option for new infrastructure construction.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said the government will launch a national monetisation pipeline for potential brownfield infrastructure assets in order to fuel new construction.

Sitharaman announced this while presenting 2021-22 Budget in Parliament.

''Monetising operating public infrastructure assets is a very important financing option for new infrastructure construction. A 'national monetisation pipeline' of potential brownfield infrastructure assets will be launched,'' Sitharaman said.

An asset monetisation dashboard will also be created for tracking the progress and to provide visibility to investors, she said.

Providing details of important steps towards monetisation, she said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and PGCIL have sponsored one InvIT each that will attract international and domestic institutional investors.

''Five operational roads with an estimated enterprise value of Rs 5,000 crore are being transferred to the NHAI InvIT. Similarily, transmission assets of a value of Rs 7,000 crore will be transferred to the PGCIL InvIT,'' she said.

The FM said the Railways will monetise dedicated freight corridor assets for operations and maintenance, after commissioning.

Besides, the next lot of airports will be monetised for operations and management concession.

''Other core infrastructure assets that will be rolled out under the asset monetisation programme are - NHAI operational toll roads, transmission assets of PGCIL, oil and gas pipelines of GAIL, IOCL and HPCL, AAI Airports in tier II and III cities, other Railway infrastructure assets, warehousing assets of CPSEs such as Central Warehousing Corporation and NAFED among others and sports stadiums,'' she said.

Sitharaman said there will be a big thrust on monetising assets.

Road Transport, Highways and MSMEs Minister Nitin Gadkari said the ministry’s increased stress on monetisation of highways will help in expanding the road network in the country.

Last month he has said that NHAI is planning to raise Rs 1 lakh crore through monetisation of highways under the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) mode in the next five years.

''NHAI intends to raise Rs 1 lakh crore through the TOT plan of asset monetisation in the next five years. We are getting excellent response and have got a lot of new models and pension funds besides investors from abroad,'' Gadkari had said.

NHAI is authorised to monetise public-funded national highway projects, which are operational and are collecting toll for at least one year after commercial operation, through the TOT model on a case-to-case basis.