L&T raises Rs 500 cr short-term loan for Hyd metro

Hyderabad metro rail concessionaire L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Limited on Tuesday said it had raised Rs 500 crore short-term loan from YES Bank, outside the consortium of lenders that has pledged close to Rs 12,000 crore loan to the ongoing project.

The move has eased pressure of bringing equity money in large amounts early on into the project by the parent company. The project concessionaire has so far spent Rs 600 crore on the works in addition to Rs 100-200 crore advances towards contracts. Most of it has been funded by the short-term loan.

“We did this after taking the consent of the lenders’ consortium,” VB Gadgil, chief executive and managing director of L&T Metro said while suggesting that at times infrastructure companies had to opt for such alternatives in the absence of immediate availability of own funds. The company is planning to draw down a large amount in the range of Rs 300 crore to Rs 500 crore from the regular loan next month.

On the execution front, the company had achieved enough pace to compensate the initial delays and was hoping to begin the trial run of the first stretch by the end of 2014, he said.

The project features three routes with a total distance of 72 km besides the transit oriented commercial development and comes at a total cost of Rs 16,375 crore. Of this, L&T is bringing in Rs 3,439 crore equity while Rs 11,478 crore is the loan component and the remaining Rs 1,458 crore is coming by way of gap funding from the Government of India. It is mandated to complete the project in five years from the appointed date, ie, July 5, 2012.

The company has already commenced the installation of viaduct on one route, Gadgil said, adding, sustaining and improving the current pace of work would be their present challenge. L&T Metro has awarded all the major contracts covering the rolling stock and signalling system. A couple of contracts for elevators and escalators and automatic fare collecting machines would be completed in a month, according to him.

The company on Tuesday unveiled the metro rail logo besides announcing that the project's brand ambassadors would be chosen from students and citizens of Hyderabad through a multistage competition.