Hindustan Construction Company ties up Rs1000 crore for Dhule project

Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) has tied up funds for its Rs1,415 crore build-operate-transfer (BOT)-toll highway project. “We signed the final documents with the banks last Friday (December 18),” chief financial officer Praveen Sood said.

The 96.5km stretch on national highway (NH)-3 will extend from the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border to Dhule in Maharashtra. A consortium of 12 financial institutions led by Punjab National Bank will be lending Rs1,065 crore for the project. The consortium includes Bank of Baroda, Allahabad Bank. Corporation Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, State Bank of India and Indian Infrastructure Finance Company.
According to Sood, the average interest rate on the loan is about 11% and the repayment period is 15 years.

Sood had told DNA Money in September the company was close to tying-up funds for the project. HCC bagged the four/six-laning project along with UK-based John Laing Investment and Ahmedabad-based Sadbhav Engineering in January. The partners’ economic interest in the project is 37%, 36% and 27%, respectively.

The project has a concession period of 18 years including the construction period of 30 months. “We did not wait for the closure to begin the initial work on the project. The actual construction will start in a week,” Sood said. HCC has two other BOT road projects, of which the annuity project in Andhra Pradesh was completed earlier this year. The other one, a Rs 340 crore toll project in Badarpur near New Delhi, will be completed next December.  b“We have not bid for any more projects, but will soon do so,” Sood said.