
Vinay Kumar G, Sector Head, Corporate Ratings, ICRA, says, “The WPI for December 2021 is expected to be around 13.0% (as against 2.0% in December 2020) translating into toll rate increase of ~8.2% during FY2023 for the projects which are linked to 3% fixed rate plus 40% of the change in WPI. For projects awarded prior to 2008, ICRA expects March WPI to be around 9.3%. In both the cases, decadal high toll rate revision is expected to result in 14-15% growth in toll collections for FY2023 on the back of 5%-6% traffic growth. The healthy growth in toll collections far outweigh the increase in maintenance costs resulting in a good improvement in cumulative DSCR numbers for BOT toll road assets which otherwise got moderated to an extent due to Covid impact. This is factoring in the assumption that impact of future Covid waves (if any) to be low.”