• The National Monetisation Pipeline book will also be released.
o The book has been prepared by Crisil Infrastructure Advisory, an arm of Crisil
Objectives and Need
• The global pandemic led to the economic crisis in the country which forced the government to increase spending to provide essential relief to vulnerable sections of society.
• Thus, the total expenditure of the government has jumped and the revenue of the government has started shrinking. This resulted in a huge rise in borrowing.
• The government found that monetisation of government- and public sector-owned assets would be an important financing option for new infrastructure construction.
About National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP)
• The NMP is part of the FY22 Budget announcement.
o The Union Budget 2021-22 laid a lot of emphasis on Asset Monetisation as a means to raise innovative and alternative financing for infrastructure
• It comprises a four-year pipeline of the Central Government's brownfield infrastructure assets.
• It will be providing visibility to investorsand will also serve as a medium-termroadmap for the Asset Monetisation initiative of the Government.
• The pipeline has been prepared in consultation with Niti Aayog.
• It will serve as a roadmap for asset monetisation of various brownfield infrastructure assets across sectors including roads, railways, aviation, power, oil and gas, and warehousing.
• The government has also developed an asset monetisation dashboard for monitoring the real-time progress of NMP.
• It aims to unlock the value of investment made in public assets which have not yielded appropriate or potential returns so far.
Other Steps
• Other core infrastructure assets that will be rolled out under the Asset Monetization Programme are:
o These include one InvIT (Infrastructure Investment Trust) each sponsored by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and Power Grid (PGCIL) that will attract international and domestic institutional investors.
o Oil and Gas Pipelines of GAIL, IOCL and HPCL
o AAI Airports in Tier II and III cities
o Other Railway Infrastructure Assets
o Warehousing Assets of CPSEs such as Central Warehousing Corporation and NAFED among others
o Sports Stadiums.
Significance
• It will serve as a medium-term roadmap for unlocking the value of public assets.
• It will generate returns for PSUs and generate employment.
• It can also reduce the burden of budgetary support required to strengthen the capital base of the public sector unit.
• The funds generated through asset monetisation can also be used for the PSUs’ technology upgrade, hence reducing the reliance on Budgetary support.
• It would help in the better financial management of government/public resources over time.
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