By Siddhi Nayak
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Indian government-backed National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development (NaBFID) plans to raise 530 billion rupees ($6.31 billion) from the debt market this fiscal year, its top executive told Reuters on Thursday.
The bank has already raised 90 billion rupees and the rest will be raised depending on the infrastructure lender’s disbursement pattern, said Rajkiran Rai, NaBFID’s managing director.
NaBFID has already sanctioned 200 billion rupees of its target of 1 trillion rupees for the 12 months through March 2025, Rai said.
And while it also issued loans worth more than 1 trillion rupees as of March 2024, that was over a 15-month period, he noted.
Rai is confident of meeting this year’s target despite the potential hiccup of the Reserve Bank of India enforcing its proposed norm of requiring lenders to set aside higher provisions for under-construction infrastructure projects.
Rai expects the new norm to impact pricing and said NaBFID has told the RBI of its concerns that a near-completion project’s cash flow would be hit by these proposed norms.
He expects the central bank to consider the industry’s concerns and as such, foresees a staggered implementation.
If that happens, Rai said, credit growth will not suffer but a temporary disruption to pricing was likely.
“If the existing guidelines are implemented as is, it (lending rates) can go up anywhere between 0.5%-0.6%,” Rai said.
“Any projects, as of now, which are viable, backed by good promoters with proper conditions and agreements, are not delayed for want of credit. There are enough lenders in the system. So I don’t foresee a problem of credit.” ($1 = 83.9550 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Siddhi Nayak, writing by Swati Bhat; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
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