NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday announced the Centre's four-year infrastructure asset monetisation plan to raise Rs 6 lakh crore ($81 billion) under the National Motenisation Pipeline (NMP).
The monetisation plan was first announced by Sitharaman in her annual budget speech in February. It will serve as a medium-term road map for the government’s asset sale initiative.
Here are key points from the launch:
* The National Monetisation Pipeline comprises a four-year pipeline from 2022-2025 of the central government's brownfield infrastructure assets : Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant
* Top three sectors identified for asset monetisation include railways, airports and coal mining.
* Under the scheme, 15 railway stadiums, 25 airports, 160 coal mining projects will be put up for asset monetisation.
* Besides these, assets such as roads, power transmission lines and gas pipelines will also be part of the monetisation plan.
* The ownership (of assets) will remain with the government and there will be a mandatory hand back after a certain time. The government is not selling off anything: FM Sitharaman
* Only under-utilised assets will be monetised and the plan will help identify brownfield assets that need to be better monetised: FM
* We are fully committed to delivering success to the National Motenisation Pipeline. We feel that it is very important to bring in the private sector for better operation and maintenance. Therefore, we are committed to very strong delivery on the ground: NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant
* The plan is about moentising the existing asset base and using their proceeds for new infrastructure creation, recycling the future assets and build mutliplier effect on growth and revive credit flow: Kant
* In monetisation of core infra assets, the ownership will continue to remain with the govt and there's a mandatory handback after the specified time period wherein the private sector will have to hand back the asset to the Centre: Kant
* It is important that India recognises that the time has come for making the most out of our assets: Finance minister
* By bringing in private participation, we are going to monetise the assets better and with whatever resource that you obtained by monetisation, you are able to put in for further investment into infrastructure building: Sitharaman
* Govt plans to correlate it with the National Infrastructure Project announced earlier: Kant
* The road sector covers about 26,700 km assets which will be considered for monetisation. It will be worth Rs 1.60 lakh crore: Kant
* The road sector has already monetised 1,400 km of its highway projects worth Rs 1,700 crore: Kant
* Similarly. power transmission sector monetised 5 assets via PowerGrid InvIt raising Rs 7,700 crore: Kant
* The Centre is looking to monetised 28,608 ckt km of transmission line worth Rs 45,200 crore which will be undertaken by PowerGrid: Kant
* The govt is also looking at power generation in hydel and solar sector through NTPC, NHPC, NLC which will be worth Rs 39,832 crore: Kant
Source:timesofindia.com