LOANS restructured by corporate debt restructuring (CDR) will cross R3 lakh crore by March 31, 2014 with R2,000 crore recast in March, reports Vishwanath Nair in Mumbai. Loan recasts in FY14 have crossed R70,000 crore with restructuring requests for close to R20,000 crore having been deferred by the CDR cell which held its last meeting for the fiscal on Monday. Banks have been divided on okaying ABG Shipyard?s request
for reworking R11,500 crore since the company hasn?t been paying some of its lenders on time. The 22-bank consortium would like to wait till the company regularises interest payments. In addition, a R6,600 crore recast for IVRCL has also been put on hold. Banks have had a rough time these past two years with hundreds of companies wanting easier repayment terms; in FY14, close to 100 companies approached the CDR cell asking for loans worth R1.25 lakh crore to be recast. In FY13, nearly 130 firms approached the cell though the amount they wanted re-worked was smaller at R91,500 crore. February saw R4,300 crore of assets being recast across six companies, higher than the R3,500 crore restructured in January.
Meanwhile, IVRCL Indore Gujarat Road Tollways (IIGRT), a special purpose vehicle (SPV) of Hyderabad-based engineering company IVRCL has received an approval for restructuring R1,200 crore worth of debt from a six-bank consortium. IIGRT is responsible for the road project on the Gujarat-Madhya Pradesh border. The road project aimed at upgrading the existing road from two lanes to four lanes on NH 59 between Indore and Jhabua, covering 155 km.
Other cases, including Raj Rayons (Rs 700 crore), Janki Corporation (Rs 500 crore) and Gupta Energy (Rs 500 crore) had also received approvals from the CDR cell in March.Gujarat NRE Coke too received a recast approval from its lender consortium for a debt of R2,400 crore. The company will have to repay this debt within eight years, after a moratorium of two years. The company will also receive additional need based working capital of R370 crore, along with a fresh term loan of R50 crore for completing power plants at Dharwad, Karnataka.
For a restructuring package to be approved, 75% of the lenders by value and 60% by number have to agree to the proposal. An email to the company on the subject remained unanswered.
