Foreign borrowings by Indian companies halve to $1.64 bn in Aug: RBI data

Indian Inc's foreign borrowings nearly halved to $1.64 billion in August this year, data from Reserve Bank showed today.

It includes borrowings through external commercial borrowings (ECBs) and rupee-denominated bonds (RDBs) which were halted briefly recently.

Indian firms had borrowed $3.17 billion through ECBs in August 2016.

There were no RDBs in the same period last year as the instrument was introduced in September.

Of the total borrowings, more than $1.56 billion was in the form of external commercial borrowings.

In a break-up, $1.54 billion was borrowed through automatic route and $23,635,295 million through approval route of ECBs.

Rest of $78,163,593 million foreign borrowings during the month were through rupee-denominated bonds, showed the data.

Fullerton India Credit Co Ltd was the only company that used the RDB route to raise the fund.

Among major borrowers using ECBs were Exim Bank of India $400 million for on-lending, Larsen & Toubro $300 million for refinancing earlier ECB and JSW Steel Coated Products raising $150 million to finance a new product.