Cube Highways offered the highest bid of Rs7701 crore for the TOT 14 bundle while IRB offered Rs1683 crore TOT 13 bundle. National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) offered Rs7150 crore for ToT 14, while Oriental Structural Engineers (OSE) offered Rs1565 crore for the TOT 13 as second highest bidders, said sources.
Mails sent to Cube and IRB did not elicit any responses.
There was an aggressive participation in TOT 13 & 14 auctions, which saw 11 bids from Adani Roads, NIIF, Highway Concession Trust (KKR), Cube, IRB, Prakash Asphaltings and Toll Highways (PATH) and OSE.
Roads under TOT 13& 14 include 28-km long Kota Bypass (NH76) and 81-km long Gwalior-Jhansi (NH75) under TOT 13; and 60-km long Delhi-Meerut Expressway (NH-334 DME), 51-km long Delhi-Hapur section (NH-24 & part of DME) and 79-km long Binjabahal-Teleibani road (NH6) under TOT 14.
Kota Bypass has an annual collection of Rs48 crore while Gwalior-Jhansi stretch earns Rs96 crore annually. Delhi-Meerut Expressway, Delhi-Hapur section and Binjabahal-Teleibani road have collections of Rs137 crore, Rs258 crore and Rs79 crore respectively.Earlier in October, Cube Highways had won TOT bundle 11 for the 84 km long Allahabad Bypass on NH19 in Uttar Pradesh, with an offer of Rs 2156 crore, while TOT bundle 12 for the 316 km long Lalitpur-Sagar -Lakhnadon section, traversing Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, was awarded to IRB Infrastructure Trust for Rs 4428 crore. The first round of bids for the two bundles – with a combined length of 400 km, was called -off and the bids were re-invited. Out of the 6 lakh crore National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), about Rs. 1.60 Lakh crore from monetization of road assets has been estimated. NHAI has been mandated to raise Rs.43,979 crore from asset monetization during FY24.
Under the ToT model, the right to operate, maintain and collect tolls over 15-30 years on operational national highway assets will be leased against a one-time, upfront concession fee paid to the government.
According to a Ministry of Road Transport & Highways statement in December 2021, NHAI has identified various assets of National Highways stretches for monetization and 86 stretches with aggregate length of around 4,912 km have been identified. NHAI plans to monetise 5500-km road assets in FY 2022-23, 7300 km in 2023-24, 8900 km in 2024-25, it said.
In 2018, Macquarie had won NHAI’s first highway asset monetisation programme through the TOT model by paying Rs 9,681 crore, 1.5 times higher than the base price set by NHAI.
Till date, NHAI has monetized 1614 km of projects through six TOT Bundles (TOT-1, 3, 5A1, 5A2, 7 & 9) and raised Rs. 26,366 crore out of the bids invited for 11 TOT bundles. TOT bundle 2,4,6,8 & 10 were annulled due to bids being lower than the IECV (Reserve Price) determined by NHAI.
NHAI had awarded ToT 9 which consists of a 73-km stretch in Allahabad-Varanasi of NH-30 in Uttar Pradesh to government backed infrastructure fund NIIF.
NHAI has also monetized 636 km of projects for Rs. 10,200 crore through InVIT.
