Govt plans to sell toll projs to pension funds; eyes $7.70 bn

Eyeing at least USD 7.7 billion (around RS 50,000 crore) from operational toll roads, the government is planning to sell over 100 projects to sovereign and pension funds.
"We have prepared a list of 104 projects which could be sold to sovereign and pension funds," a Road Transport and Highways Ministry official told PTI.
The objective is to award these toll roads to private sector for operations and maintenance for a fixed long-term period against an upfront value, he said.
"These projects with a total length of about 6,000 km have a total potential of USD 7.70 billion," the official said. It has lined up 104 operational toll roads constructed through public funds.

Twenty of the 104 projects fetch annual total collection of Rs 50 crore or more each while 33 are such which fetch an annual revenue in the range of Rs 25 to Rs 50 crore each, the official said.
He said 40 per cent of the total 104 toll projects are generating more than 10 per cent of the project completion cost annually through toll.

Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari recently said the government plans to sell highways projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore to foreign pension funds and insurance funds to attract overseas investments into the sector.

"We are trying to attract foreign investors. We have projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore. They are interested in buying out projects," he had said.
The government also plans to double the length of the National Highways to 2 lakh km from the existing 1 lakh km.
Indian road network of 33 lakh Km is second largest in the world and consists of 200 km of expressways, about 1 lakh km of national highways 1.31 lakh km of state highways and other roads.
About 65 per cent of freight and 80 per cent of passenger traffic is carried by the roads.

National Highways constitute only about 1.7 per cent of the road network but carry about 40 per cent of the total road traffic.