ASSET MONETISATION: THE MISSING MODEL

At a time when government finances have been hit due to Covid-19, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman intro-duced a new mechanism of revenue mobilisation in Budget 2021—asset monetisation. It aims to unlock value from public assets and tap the private sector to fund infrastruc-ture projects.

“Monetising operating public infrastructure assets is an important financing option for new infrastructure construction,” Sitharaman said in her Budget speech. A National Monetisation Pipeline of potential brownfield infrastructure assets was announced, along with a dash-board to track the progress of identified projects. Opera-tions and maintenance of dedicated freight corridor proj-ects of Indian Railways, highway projects of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), airports in Tier-II and III cities, oil and gas pipelines of Gas Authority of In-dia Ltd (GAIL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), under-uti-lised land and other assets of central public sector enter-prises (CPSEs), were zeroed in on for monetisation.

Within weeks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi an-nounced