 "IL&FS independent of govt; capable of handling its issues: Subhash Garg")
Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS), which has defaulted on a series of interest payments, needs to resolve issues on its own, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said.
"IL&FS is independent of government. It has independent board and shareholders. So, IL&FS needs to resolve its issues on its own and I think it is capable of doing it," Garg told PTI in an interview.
Although government has no holding in the company, some of the state-owned financial firms including LIC and SBI are shareholders of the non-banking financial company (NBFC).
"It has assets, it has liabilities to take care. There might be some temporary mismatch, so it is IL&FS, which will deal with the problem. The government is not involved directly," Garg said.
Earlier this month, IL&FS Group defaulted on inter-corporate deposits and commercial papers.
On September 4, it came to light that IL&FS had defaulted on a short-term loan of Rs 10 billion from Sidbi, while a subsidiary has also defaulted on Rs 5 billion dues to the development financial institution, which reportedly forced Sidbi to ask its chief general manager in charge of the risk management department to resign.
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State-owned LIC is the largest shareholder with a fourth of the firm's equity, while Orix Corporation of Japan owns 23.5 per cent.
Other shareholders include Abu Dhabi Investment Authority with 12.5 per cent stake, IL&FS Employees Welfare Trust with 12 per cent, HDFC with 9.02 per cent, Central Bank of India with 7.67 per cent and State Bank of India (SBI) with 6.42 per cent at the March-end 2018.
In a letter to its employees, IL&FS had claimed that if funds worth Rs 160 billion stuck with concession authorities were released on time, it would not have landed in this mess.
"Our monies were used to fund the cost and time overruns caused by concession authority delays in handing over right of way.
"It is our case that if concession authorities released our monies, around Rs 16,000 crore of IL&FS group liquidity and stuck in claims and termination payments, we would not be in the situation that we are in," IL&FS had said in its letter.
IL&FS, which is credited for building the longest tunnel in the country (the Chenani-Nashri tunnel), is sitting on a debt pile of around Rs 910 billion and had been downgraded to junk status by rating agencies following the default. Of this, Rs 570 billion are bank loans alone, most of which are from state-run lenders.
While IL&FS Transport Network, the holding firm of the group's road assets, has nearly Rs 350 billion consolidated debt, IL&FS Financial Services has Rs 170 billion of debt, which sits as standard asset for most banks, according to a Nomura India report.