Govt plans to tweak highway auction norms

NEW DELHI: The government is likely to approve three proposals this week to improve NHAI’s fund flow for taking up highway stretches. While the proposal to tweak conditions for auctioning of completed highway stretches to make them attractive for investors and allowing NHAI to securitise the future flow of toll revenue of already operational stretches with banks and financial institutions to get upfront lump sum amount would be considered by the cabinet, sources said the government is also likely to allow NHAI to float its infrastructure investment trust (InvIT).
TOI has learnt that the highways ministry has sought approval to amend two conditions for auctioning the operational NH stretches under the Toll-Operate-Transfer (TOT) model. It has proposed to fix the tenure of the auction period from 15 to 30 years instead of 30 years at present. The second proposed change is to allow bundling of projects, which have been completed and are operational for more than a year. Currently, only projects completed before two years are put together for auction in a region under TOT.