The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has brought down its debt liability by a massive Rs 90,634 crore, or 27%, in the financial year 2024-25, by aggressive asset monetisation, a freeze on fresh borrowings, and pre-payment of loans.
The total debt of the authority stood at Rs 2,44,539 crore as on March 31, 2025, down sharply from Rs 3,35,173 crore at the end of 2023-24, a senior official told FE.
In 2024-25, NHAI was required to pay Rs 16,127 crore as principal for the bonds that were maturing during the year. However, it paid Rs 74,507 crore extra to sharply reduce its outstanding debt.
“The NHAI has reduced its debt burden by fully repaying the loans of Rs 50,000 crore raised from the National Small Savings Fund (NSSF) in the past and various bank loans of around Rs 36,000 crore,” the official added. The outstanding bank loans on April 1, 2024 were Rs 78,400 crore, which has been reduced to Rs 42,255 crore by the close of 2024-2025.
“The pre-payment of these loans has resulted in a considerable reduction in NHAI’s overall debt and will lower interest costs,” he added.
The debt reduction has been achieved without compromising on capital expenditure, the official added. In 2024-25, the NHAI completed construction of 5,614 km as against the target of 5,150 km. Also, during the year, expenditure for development of national highway infrastructure reached an all-time high of over Rs 2.5 lakh crore, an increase of 21% over previous year.
Proceeds of monetisation of highways through infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) are exclusively used for debt repayment. Debt servicing also gets support from toll collections which are increasing at 10% every year as more and more highways get added and rates get revised to keep up with inflation.
In 2024-25, as much as Rs 28,724 crore came through monetisation. The highways builder also registered the highest ever single round InvIT receipt worth Rs 17,738 crore during the year. Toll collection during the year stood at around Rs 26,500 crore.
As per procedure, all toll proceeds go to the government and the amount comes back to the NHAI as part of overall support from the Budget.
As the government went into overdrive to push investments in infrastructure, it enhanced the mandate of NHAI by assigning the implementation of Bharatmala Pariyojana in 2017. To implement the scheme, NHAI raised borrowing, subject to internal and extra budgetary resources limit approved by the government in the Union Budget.
As a result, the debt of NHAI increased to Rs 3,42,801 crore by the 2022-23. At that time, the government stepped in and stopped any further debt raising by the authority. Since then, debt reduction has started. As debt route was not available, the government stepped up direct funding of the organisation via Budget outlays.