13 investors in race for 75 road operation contracts

Over a dozen investors, including HDFC Bank, JP Morgan India, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (India) and Brookfield Asset Management, are interested in executing maintenance contracts for 75 highway projects over 4,500 km.

Highway ministry officials met representatives of these companies last week in Mumbai.

The government collects Rs 3,000 crore toll from these 75 highway projects. The projects the government wants to farm out will be a bundle of two or three stretches of roads offered as operations and maintenance contracts.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had in August authorised the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to monetise highway projects constructed through the toll, operate transfer method that are generating toll revenues for at least two years.

The government feels monetisation of public-funded highways will attract long-term institutional investment because of future toll receivables.

Other investors in the fray are Mizuho Asiainfra Capital, Mizuho Bank, SBI Macquarie Infrastructure Management, CPP Investment Board, Crisil Risk Infrastructure Solutions, ONMONE, Accuracy, JICA Mountainous Highway Project and TransAsia Infrastructure (India).

The highway ministry plans operations and maintenance contracts for 75 road projects, of which projects that came up in the engineering, procurement and construction method will be bid out in the first phase. EPC projects are fully funded by the government.

This will be followed by bidding for hybrid annuity mode projects. "HAM projects operational for two years will be eligible for tendering," a ministry official told Business Standard. Under the HAM model, the government contributes 40 per cent of the project cost. In the final phase, highway projects on the build, operate and transfer annuity model will be auctioned. In the BOT Annuity model, the cost of laying the road is paid to a developer on a six-month basis after the project starts commercial operations.