NATIONAL MONETISATION PIPELINE

Subject: Economy

Context: 8 ministries list assets for monetisation: from stations to telecom towers, pipelines to roads.

Concept:

National Asset Monetization Pipeline

In Union Budget 2021, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that a national monetisation pipeline will be launched, with a dashboard to track the progress and provide visibility to investors.
Asset monetisation is the process of unlocking the value of investment made in public assets which have not yielded appropriate or potential returns so far.
The Minister informed that an Asset Monetization dashboard will also be created for tracking the progress and to provide visibility to investors.

Some important measures in the direction of monetisation are as follows:

National Highways Authority of India and PGCIL each have sponsored one InvIT that will attract international and domestic institutional investors. Five operational roads with an estimated enterprise value of Rs.5,000 crore are being transferred to the NHAIInvIT. Similarly, transmission assets of a value of Rs. 7,000 crore will be transferred to the PGCILInvIT.
Railways will monetize Dedicated Freight Corridor assets for operations and maintenance, after commissioning.
The next lot of Airports will be monetised for operations and management concession.

Other core infrastructure assets that will be rolled out under the Asset Monetization Programme are:

NHAI Operational Toll Roads
Transmission Assets of PGCIL
Oil and Gas Pipelines of GAIL, IOCL and HPCL (iv) AAI Airports in Tier II and III cities,
Other Railway Infrastructure Assets
Warehousing Assets of CPSEs such as Central Warehousing Corporation and NAFED among others
Sports Stadiums.