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Nirmala Sitharaman launches National Monetisation Pipeline

2021-08-23

Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance, announced the launch of the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) on August 23.

According to a statement, the NMP programme has a four-year pipeline of the government's brownfield infrastructure assets. NMP will provide visibility to the visitors, and it will serve as a medium-term roadmap for asset monetisation. The pipeline has been prepared through consultation with Niti Aayog, a public policy think tank of the government.

It is a part of the Budget of FY22. The ministry said that the asset monetisation initiative of the public assets is an important financing option for new infrastructure construction. To provide visibility to the investors, an asset monetisation dashboard would be created to track the progress.

She mentioned some vital measures in monetisation. It includes InvIT (Infrastructure Investment Trust), sponsored by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL), which will attract national and international institutional investors. Five operational roads of around Rs 5,000 crore have been transferred to NHAI InvIT. Similarly, assets worth Rs 7,000 crore have been transferred to PGCIL InvIT.

As per the Ministry, the Indian Railways will monetise assets of the Dedicated Freight Corridors for operations and maintenance (O&M) after commissioning. Next, the airports will be monetised for O&M concession.

Other infrastructure assets to be rolled out under the Asset Monetisation Programme include operational toll roads of NHAI, PGCIL's transmission assets, oil and gas pipeline of the Gas Authority of India (GAIL), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), Airports Authority of India (AAI) airports in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, railways infrastructure assets, and warehousing assets of Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs).

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