Macquarie, Brookfield in race for road projects

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The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has received four bids for the first bundle of nine projects to be monetised under the toll-operate-transfer model, a top official said on Thursday.

The NHAI is planning to auction toll collection for about 1,700 km highways under its toll-operate-transfer (TOT) model, aimed at monetising public-funded roads.

"... Four bids (have been) received for the first ToT bundle...We hope to select the most competitive bidder within next 10-12 days," NHAI's Member (Finance) Rohit Kumar Singh said.

Singh said the four bidders are Macquarie, Brookfield, Roads-NIIF (National Infrastructure Investment Fund) and IRB.

The technical bids will be opened tomorrow and after technical qualification assessment, financial bids will be opened in a week, he said.

"I personally think the response is outstanding given the complexities involved in operating and maintaining roads in India for 30 years especially with issues and challenges like capacity augmentation," he added.

The Cabinet in August 2017 had approved a proposal to monetise public-funded national highway projects. Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had said at that time that the the corpus generated from proceeds could be utilised by the government to meet its fund requirements regarding future development besides for operation and maintenance of highways.

Around 75 operational NH projects completed under public funding have been preliminarily identified for monetisation using TOT model.

As per the Economic Survey, India will need about USD 4.5 trillion in the next 25 years for infrastructure development, of which it will be able to garner only about USD 3.9 trillion.