The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has drawn up a provisional list of 17 highway projects spanning 1,692.5 km across nine states (Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra) for monetization under the Toll-Operate-Transfer (TOT) and Infrastructure Investment Trust (InvIT) modes of India. Fiscal year 2026-2027.
These 17 projects identified for FY 2026-27 exclude assets proposed for monetization through the self-sponsored Raajmarg Infra Investment Trust (RIIT), which will be a separate monetization vehicle.
In this context, asset monetization means handing over the rights to operate and collect tolls on existing highways to private investors for a specified period (usually 20 to 30 years) in exchange for a large upfront payment, without selling the actual ownership of the land or assets.
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This initiative is in line with the country’s National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), currently in its second iteration, through which the government has put $A revenue target of Rs 16.72 lakh crore across segments for FY 2026-30. The target for the bandits alone is in $4.42 million crores. Under NMP 1.0, NHAI achieved 71% of $1.60 lakh crore targeted for road sector from FY 2021-22 to FY 2024-25.
Over the past three financial years (FY 2023-2024 to FY 2025-2026), NHAI has generated an income of approx. $85,749 crore through identified highway assets, based on cumulative totals of Rs $Rs 1.42 lakh crore has been collected across more than 6,100 km since the start of the programme. NHAI has missed the mark $29,000 crore for FY2026 with a margin of approx $1000 Crores.
