With long gestation period of infrastructure projects discouraging banks to fund them, the government is planning to allow lenders to such projects to sell a part of their loan book to the state-run India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL) on a commission basis.
The proposed 'takeout financing' scheme will permit lenders to infrastructure companies to sell part of their loans to IIFCL so that their medium term deposits do not come under pressure due to the long gestation period of infrastructure projects.
The empowered committee of secretaries has finalised the scheme and detailed guidelines in this regards will be issued by the Finance Ministry soon, sources said.
Although there are certain disagreements between IIFCL and banks on the issue of commission, sources said, the divergence has been ironed out by introducing modification in certain conditions.
The proposed commission earlier was 50 basis points but it has been agreed to reduce on case-to-case basis, sources informed. Besides, the deadline to operationalise the projects, called commercial operation date, has been reduced to three years against the proposed ceiling of four years.
Infrastructure is the main bottleneck which comes in the way of sustaining high economic growth. The country requires over $500 billion during the 11th Plan to upgrade its infrastructure.
