NHAI aims to earn Rs 5362 crore from its second TOT bid

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has come up with second Toll-Operate-Transfer (TOT) Request For Proposal (RFP) with an aim to generate a minimum of Rs 5,362 crore from eight road assets in four states.

As per the RFP document floated, the total National Highways put together measures 586.55 km in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar and West Bengal.

In March this year, NHAI had received a highest bid of Rs 9,681.50 crore from Macquarie Group-Ashoka Buildcon as against the reserved bid price of Rs 6,258 crore to manage 648 km of National Highways in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Gujarat.

The government is looking at putting up more road assets under future TOT bids to monetise them for its ambitious Bharatmala Programme. The aim is to put up 75 road projects on the block on a long-term lease.

According to Crisil, about Rs 60,000 crore is estimated to be raised by NHAI over the next 2-3 years.

The highway projects put under the TOT are road assets that the government got implemented via Engineering, Procurement and Construction model and NHAI has been recovering toll.

Under the TOT model, successful international and domestic private players are required to pay the bidding amount upfront. This money will be utilised by NHAI for funding construction of the upcoming highway projects. Those bagging the assets will recover their investments as well as returns by way of collection of toll.