The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will be the agent of the centre’s asset monetisation programme to raise around Rs 30-40,000 crore through monetisation of its operational stretches in the next two years. The company officials said that the pandemic prevented some of its asset monetisation plans. Still, with traffic recovering to normal now, nearly Rs 10,000 crore of road assets will be monetised by NHAI in the current year.

An NHAI official said that the entity is in contact with many investors, and bids will be soon invited for taking the NHAI project under the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) model. Under the TOT model, highway projects have been working for around two years and have been making an excellent revenue to investors for carrying out O&M operations. The investors recovered the investment from tolls collected for a period of granting spreading over 20-30 years.