The Central government’s asset monetisation drive is on right path as in aggregate, revenues and investments mobilised from asset monetisation in FY22 stood at 96,000 crore. The monetisation target was 88,200 crore for FY22, the first year of the 6 trillion four-year National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP). Coal and mineral mining block auctions led the monetisation in FY22 with 58,700 crore with coal contributing 40,000 crore and other mines 18,700 crore as against an annual target of just 3,394 crore. Opening up of the coal mining sector to the private sector helped in auction of 22 coal blocks, award of MDO (mine-developer-and-operator) contracts, etc. Besides coal, various easing processes helped in the auction of 31 mineral blocks.
In terms of value, the ministry of roads has achieved Rs 23,000 crore by monetising 390 km of roads under Infrastructure Investment Trusts and Transfer-Operate-Transfer models, as against the FY22 target of Rs 30,000 crore. The private developers and agencies concerned – NHAI, PowerGrid etc – could use these funds to quicken the pace of their capital expenditures.
Ministry of power closed the last financial year with monetisation of assets worth Rs 9,500 crore compared with the target of Rs 10,470 crore. Bulk of it came from Power Grid which undertook monetisation of its first batch of transmission assets under the InvIT model. Railways has collected just Rs 800 crore via monetisation in the last fiscal as against the target of Rs 17,810 crore. The target for railways was to monetise 40 stations in FY22 and permit private trains under PPP model.
