The Indian shipping industry today demanded from the Centre to create a Rs 10,000-crore fund to provide soft loans as availability of low-cost money from abroad was increasingly drying up.
A corpus of Rs 10,000 crore should be created for providing soft loans to the Indian shipping companies to acquire ships so that they can take advantage of falling prices of assets caused by the global financial meltdown, Indian National Shipowners Association President S Hajara said.
“This fund will pave the way for raising debt at a lower cost,” he said.
Until six months ago, Indian shipping companies were able to raise debt below 4 per cent in the foreign markets, but now it has dried up, Hajara said, adding the shipping ministry has approached the finance ministry for this purpose.
“We are making a request for financial assistance to the (central) government. We would like some fund creation and tax concessions,” Shipping Secretary APVN Sarma said.
The Indian shipping companies raise debts from foreign markets because of cheap interest rates and long repayment duration.
