Central transmission utility PowerGrid Corp, which reported 37% rise in December quarter net profit at Rs 809 crore, today said it is likely to get a Rs 5,000-crore line of credit (LoC) from the State Bank of India (SBI).
"The State Bank has in-principle agreed to extend a line of credit worth Rs 5,000 crore to us. We expect to get the first tranche of the fund by the end of next month," a company official told PTI on condition of anonymity here on the sidelines of result announcement event.
This is part of the Navratna company's target of investing Rs 1 lakh crore during the 12th Plan period (2012-17) to increase transmission network by over 60,000 circuit km to around 1.5 trillion circuit km.
The company had reported a net profit of Rs 591 crore in the year-ago period.
It reported Q3 turnover of Rs 2,576 crore, up 20% from Rs 2,145 crore year ago.
The PSU declared interim dividend of 8% for the fiscal against 5% last financial year.
As of the reporting period, its commissioned assets stood at Rs 6,285 crore, while average availability of transmission system stood at 99.93%.
Of the total fund raising plan, the Central utility will be raising 30%, or Rs 30,000 crore, through equity (internal accruals and FPO proceeds) and the rest Rs 70,000 crore through debt, which could be from both domestic as well as international markets.
"PowerGrid has been raising debt mainly from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank with the Government backing.
"But considering our ambitious target, we cannot depend on these two multilateral lenders for meeting our huge investment targets. We will have to explore other avenues like ECBs [external commercial borrowings]," the official said.
