Centre floats guidelines to scale up power sector infra

The Power Ministry has floated guiding principles for State governments to identify and monetise brownfield transmission assets in a bid to scale up power sector infrastructure.

The rationale is that States have significant potential for asset monetisation by leveraging brownfield transmission projects and mobilising proceeds for new infrastructure projects, boosting their economic prospects. It suggested the Acquire, Operate, Maintain and Transfer (AOMT) based Public Private Partnership model.

This comes after the Centre monetised Power Grid’s (PGCIL) five transmission projects in May last year, raising more than ?7,700 crore. For this, PGCIL had set up an InvIT (PowerGrid Infrastructure Investment Trust, or PGInvIT) in January 2021. In FY22, PGCIL raised ?8,370 crore through monetisation and the target for FY23 is ?6,860 crore.

As of March 2020, India’s total transmission line length network stood at around 7,13,400 circuit kms (66 kV). “Brownfield seasoned transmission assets in particular have demonstrated significant investor appetite from long-term institutional investors owing to underlying asset characteristics and availability-based business model as evidenced by successful InvlT based monetisation for transmission assets in public as well as private sector,” Power Ministry said.

Under the AOMT model, the SPV, which will own the transmission asset, is bought by the selected investor for a prescribed time with associated rights and duties against payment of upfront lump sum amount.