Lenders yet to give approval to HPL rights issue

Although the board of ailing Haldia Petrochemicals Limited (HPL) had approved the proposed rights issue of the company two months back, the lenders were yet to give their approval.
"The lenders are yet to give their approval to the rights issue. A meeting has been scheduled in a few days with the lenders", sources in the company told PTI.
Then industry minister and chairman of HPL Partha Chatterjee announced that rights issue was the only way for an immediate infusion of capital in the company.
HPL had planned to issue 52 crore equity shares at Rs 25.10 per share on rights basis which was expected to fetch Rs 1,300 crore to the company.

However, the other promoter Purnendu Chatterjee of TCG expressed reservations on the proposed rights issue and suggested alternative means to raise capital for the company.
Sources said that the capacity utilisation has increased to 83 per cent at 200 tonnes per hour (TPH) from as low as 90 TPH a few weeks back.

Installed capacity at the plant was 240 TPH.
"This has been made possible as HPL had signed an agreement with state-owned MSTC Limited which had agreed to open L/Cs on behalf of the company to buy naphtha from oil companies", the source said.
They said that the company had been able to bring down naphtha imports to negligible levels and its sources were IOC and other oil PSUs like BPCL and HPCL.

IOC, which holds nearly nine per cent in HPL, had evinced interest in buying out West Bengal government's stake in the company.