The bids were invited for the project in December 2023. The NHAI is expected to issue the letter of award to the highest bidder in a day or two, said people familiar with the matter. Highways Infrastructure Trust offered 6,661 crore for the TOT Bundle 16, followed by IRB Infrastructure Trust (6,183 crore), Adani Roads (5,610 crore) and Cube Highways (5,011 crore), they said. Road assets under TOT Bundle 16 include the four-lane Hyderabad-Nagpur corridor in Telangana.
Under the TOT model, the right to operate, maintain and collect tolls over 15-30 years on operational national highway assets is leased to a private entity against a one-time, upfront concession fee paid to the government. The NHAI has identified 86 national highway stretches with aggregate length of about 4,912 km for monetisation.
Until February, the road transport and highways ministry garnered 1 lakh crore through asset monetisation – 42,334 crore through TOT, 26,125 crore through infrastructure investment trust and 42,000 crore through securitisation.
