118 Debt Placements Raised Rs 22848 Cr In H1

While the public issuances for debt and equity nose-dived to a dismal level in the first half of 2001-02 raising only Rs 1,101 crore and Rs 6 crore, respectively, the debt private placement market continued to thrive as in the past five years.

The first half witnessed 118 institutions and corporates mobilising an amount of Rs 22,848 crore through debt private placement. This has been reported by Prithvi Haldea of Prime, a database on debt private placements.

In line with the international practice, Prime now takes cognisance of only such debt placements which have a tenor and put/ call option of more than one year. On a comparable basis, Rs 22,848 crore mobilised during the first half of this fiscal is almost similar to Rs 23,057 crore raised by 122 issuers in the corresponding period of the previous year. Incidentally, the previous full fiscal had seen a mobilisation of Rs 52,456 crore of such papers.

 

A notable development of the period, according to Haldea, was the increase in the mobilisation by the private sector.

Corporates raised Rs 6,304 crore during the period, which is 31 per cent higher than the Rs 4,812 crore mobilised in the year-ago period.

Leading the pack is Reliance Petroleum (Rs 1,061 crore), followed by G E Capital (Rs 520 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 350 crore), Gujarat Ambuja Cement (Rs 300 crore) and Tata Power (Rs 300 crore). The near-demise of the IPO route partly explains the increasing mobilisation by the private sector.

The mobilisation by PSUs, too, saw a 34 per cent improvement, according to the PRIME report. While the first half of the previous year had seen a mobilisation of Rs 3,642 crore, an amount of Rs 4,881 crore was raised in the current fiscal.

On the other hand, the period witnessed a near-similar level in mobilisation by the all-India financial institutions/ banks. The sector raised Rs 8,056 crore in the current fiscal as against Rs 8,038 crore in the year-ago period.

The mobilisation by state-level undertakings (SLUs), according to Prime, nose-dived by 51 per cent to Rs 2,891 crore in the first half of the current fiscal from Rs 5,858 crore in the corresponding period last year. Prime points out that this has been partly a result of the new RBI guidelines to banks on investments in state papers. It may be mentioned that most of the funds raised by SLUs have been for the infrastructure sector, mainly power, roads and water resources.

On an industry-wise basis, the financial services sector including banking and term lending continued to dominate the market, collectively raising Rs 10,756 crore or 47 per cent of the total amount. Power ranked the second with a 17 per cent share (Rs 3,785 crore), followed by petroleum (Rs 1,967 crore) and steel (Rs 1,050 crore).