A joint forum of lenders will consider the recast of HCC’s ₹12,000-crore debt pile, the first under the RBI’s recently announced scheme for restructuring of stressed assets of companies.

The RBI’s Scheme for Sustainable Structuring of Stressed Assets (S4A) allows banks to separate the total debt of a stressed company into two. While the company will service the sustainable part of debt, the rest is converted into equity.

HCC said in a statement on Wednesday that the joint lenders’ forum has agreed to consider its debt, under the recent RBI S4A guidelines, with July 12 as the reference date.

Lenders get 90 days from the ‘reference date’ to formulate a resolution plan and implement it, along with necessary internal approvals, it said. “The move will help the company bridge the gap of “cash-flow timing mismatch” between claims realisation (including its interest) and debt servicing, the HCC statement said.

The lenders’ decision comes at an opportune time as HCC is on the recovery path with an order book growth of 35 per cent in the past 15 months in the backdrop of the government’s focus on infrastructure, it said. In the past couple of years, HCC took up the recovery of ₹11,000 crore dues from government agencies through arbitration proceedings and has received arbitration awards of ₹3,041 crore in its favour.

However, payment of these awards remain a challenge and only ₹373 crore could be collected as the clients kept appealing to the Supreme Court without paying the dues, said HCC.

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