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India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd today expressed confidence that it would be able to achieve its target of raising Rs 10,000 crore during the current financial year.
A Government of India enterprise, the company has so far raised about Rs 4,200 crore and expects to raise the balance Rs 5,800 crore over two tranches of bond issue of about Rs 2,500 crore to Rs 3,000 crore each.
Harsh Kumar Bhanwala, Executive Director of IIFCL, said, “The company had raised about Rs 1,200 crore through a bond offer in the first tranche earlier this fiscal and will hit the market with second tranche in the third week of this month and follow this up with another one early next year.”
“The first tranche of bond offer and our private placement received good response in spite of the tough business environment and we are confident of raising the targeted amount during the fiscal,” he explained.
Addressing a press conference here today, he said that its UK subsidiary, has so far extended loans of over $1 billion and sanctioned about $4 billion of the $5 billion corpus it started with. There is growing interest in overseas loans as they work out cheaper for infrastructure companies, including to meet the requirement of capital equipment.
He said that they are at an advanced stage of finalising a deal of about Rs 1,000 crore with L&T Hyderabad metro rail project.
Mentioning about the growing interest among companies to access takeout finance, he said that this has become popular in a very short time. As a part of the company's efforts to broadbase this offering, this facility is now available for a longer term made possible following approval from the Government of India.
“This will allow direct lending with a facility for the longer term,” he said.
On the issue of offering subordinate debt scheme, which works out as a quasi-debt equity offering, he said this allows the company to play a role beyond the initial mandate of extending debt. This is a form of debt-equity offering ideal for companies. “So far about six projects have been financed and we expect to add another six companies by the year end,” he explained.
Bhanwal said that the company is also in the process of negotiating with multilateral lending agencies like JICA, AFD and other European multi-lateral lending agencies to raise up to $1 billion. The entire process could take few months, he said.
rishikumar.vundi@thehindu.co.in
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