DIAL to get Rs 4,940 cr loan from 12 banks

The Delhi International Airport- a public-private partnership mandated to modernise and restructure the airport...

The Delhi International Airport (DIAL) — a public-private partnership mandated to modernise and restructure the airport — has signed key financing agreements with project lenders for Rs 3,650 crore and foreign currency loans of $350 million.

According to DIAL chief financial officer Shirish Navlekar, the total capital expenditure programme of the first phase till year 2010 has been estimated at about Rs 8,900 crore. This is expected to be funded by a debt-equity mix of 1.25:1. He added that a consortium of 12 banks have signed the financing documents for loans aggregating Rs 4,940 crore.

The rupee component of the debt amounting to Rs 3,650 crore has been raised with a 17 year door-to-door tenor at an interest rate of 10.5 per cent. The domestic banks financing the project include Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Andhra Bank and Vijaya Bank among others. The external commercial borrowing component of debt amounting to $350 million has been raised with banks like ICICI Bank, Singapore and Abu Dhabi commercial banks.

DIAL is currently implementing the master plan for the development of a new airport complex. Work on the integrated passenger terminal and runway commenced in Feburary 2007 and the new terminal would be inaugurated in 2010 before the Commonwealth Games. By 2008, the company plans to build an internal standards-compliant runway and domestic terminal. While IGI airport currently caters to 20 million passengers everyday, its ultimate design capacity, post-modernisation, is likely to be 100 million passengers each year by 2026.