Adani road transport bids for NHAI's three toll projects

Adani Road Transport, a wholly owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, has submitted bids for three bundles of Toll Operate Transfer (TOT) offered by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
Adani has submitted bids for ToT projects 6, 7 and 8, while Canadian institutional investor CDPQ (Indian Highways Concessions Trust) and the Singapore-based Cube Highways have submitted bids for ToT 6 and TOT 7 and 8, respectively.

The domestic firms that have submitted technical and financial bids for ToT 6 are IRB Infrastructure, Prakash Asphalting & Toll Highways (PATH), PNC Infratech, Oriental Structural Engineers (OSE) and Sekura Roads. Nagpur-based D P Jain has submitted a bid for ToT 8. The financial bids of the technically-qualified bidders will be opened by mid-February, said people aware of the development.

Reserve prices of these assets are not yet disclosed.

ToT Project Bundle 6 includes 4 Lane Agra Bypass of 32.8 km and 4 Lane Shivpuri Jhansi of 75.3 Km. ToT Project Bundle 7 consists of 135-km long Eastern Peripheral Expressway of NCR and Bundle 8 consists of 139-km Borkhedi-Wadner-Deodhari-Kelapur- Maharashtra/Telangana Border of NH-7.

Adani, IRB, PATH spokespersons confirmed their participation while mails sent to NHAI, CDPQ, Cube Highways, OSE, PNC and Sekura did not elicit any response.



In 2018, Macquarie had won NHAI’s first highway asset monetisation programme through the TOT model by paying Rs 9,681 crore, 1.5 times higher than the base price set by NHAI. NHAI had to cancel the ToT bundle 2 monetisation programme as none of the bidders matched up the floor price of Rs 5,632 for 586-km length. Cube Highways had been awarded TOT- Bundle 3 Projects, consisting of 9 road stretches with 2,265 lane km across four states while the fourth bundle was annulled.

Adani and DP Jain had won the ToT Bundle 5 assets which were divided into two parts - 5A-1 & 5A-2 – and both companies quoted the highest prices, respectively.

The ToT model developed by NHAI uses a one-time, upfront concession fee paid to the government in return for the right to operate, maintain and collect tolls over 20-30 years on operational national highway assets.

According to a Ministry of Road Transport & Highways statement in December 2021, NHAI has identified 86 stretches with aggregate length of around 4,912 km for monetization. NHAI plans to monetize 5,500-km of road assets in FY 2022-23, 7,300 km in 2023-24, and 8,900 km in 2024-25, it said.

NHAI plans to raise about Rs 2 lakh crore in next three years. It will also monetise the existing assets through the infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs). NHAI will use the funds to build new highways and cut its mounting debt, which was Rs 3.17 lakh crore at the end of 2020-21.

In November, NHAI had raised Rs 5,000 crore through InvIT. Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board were the anchor investors to the InvIT along with more than a dozen domestic institutional investors.