State-owned Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL) will raise up to Rs. 600 crore debt to fund Rs. 1,600 crore capex programme for the current fiscal, a top company official said on Thursday.
“Ours have a Rs. 1,600 crore capex (capital expenditure) programme for current fiscal. We intend to fund around Rs. 1,000 crore from internal accruals and the remaining Rs 600 crore would be raised by way of debt,” RINL Director (Finance) P Madhusudan told PTI .
The Vizag-based steel maker, which is in the process of jacking up its capacity to 6.3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from 3.6 mtpa earlier, said the fund would be raised either through loans from banks or by issuing bonds having a tenure of minimum five years.
“A final decision on the ways of raising funds would be taken by October and the fund would be raised in the third quarter of the current fiscal,” he said.
RINL’s debt to equity ratio is in a comfortable situation at 0.8:1 and hence, there would be no problem for exercising any of the two options for raising funds, he said.
RINL is raising its steel-making capacity to 6.3 mtpa at its lone Vizag facility with an investment of Rs. 12,500 crore.
However, it has already spent over Rs. 9,000 crore towards the purpose.
Besides, the company plans to invest additional Rs. 7,000 crore towards modernisation of its existing plant which would raise its capacity further to 7.3 mtpa.
Last February, country’s largest lender SBI had sanctioned a Rs. 2,650 crore loan for meeting its capex needs.
The SBI Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri had also handed over the first tranche of the loan amounting to Rs. 500 crore to RINL Chairman and Managing Director A.P. Chaudhary during his visit to RINL’s Vizag plant.
