Jet Airways refinances Rs 1,800-crore debt

In order to reduce it annual interest costs, India’s largest carrier Jet Airways has refinanced Rs 1,800 crore worth of debt through dollar loans. The conversion is for the current financial year. “We converted Rs 1,200 crore as of September 30 and Rs 600 crore later,” a Jet executive said on condition of anonymity.

“Refinancing would save the airline more than Rs 100 crore in terms of annual interest costs,” the executive added. As of September 30, Jet had a total debt of Rs 13,700 crore and total cash reserves of Rs 760 crore. Most of the short-term debt is working capital debt. Only Rs 500 crore is short-term debt.

Jet had incurred losses of Rs 467.6 crore in the previous financial year. But the airline managed a profit of Rs 3.5 crore in the first quarter of the current financial year and went on to make a Rs 12-crore profit in the second quarter of the current financial year.

The country’s three biggest carriers – Jet, Kingfisher Airlines and state-owned Air India (AI), which account for 65 per cent of the domestic passenger traffic – have a combined debt of Rs 63,045 crore. Of this, Rs 16,000 crore is in the form of short-term loans.

Air India has already approached RBI to restructure its debt. The airline accumulated losses of Rs 14,000 crore in the last four financial years and has a total debt of Rs 40,000 crore, including Rs 18,000 crore as working capital loans.

If RBI agrees to the proposal, the resultant reduction in interest rate on its working capital loans (from 12 per cent at present) will aid Air India in lowering its debt-servicing burden.