State-run infrastructure financier India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL) is looking to disburse Rs 25,000 crore of loans in FY2024, a growth of 81 per cent over the previous fiscal.
In the fiscal ended March 31, 2023, the infrastructure lender disbursed Rs 13,826 crore loans to various infrastructure projects as against a sanction amount of Rs 29,171 crore.
“For this year (FY2024), we have set a target of Rs 50,000 crore for sanction and close to Rs 25,000 crore for disbursement,” said P R Jaishankar, Managing Director, IIFCL. He said the demand for loans is coming from various infrastructure sectors, including traditional ones like roads, power, energy, renewable energy, airports, ports. “We have demand coming in from data centers, transmissions and the new-age completed asset classes like InvITs (Infrastructure Investment Trust) and bonds,” Jaishankar said..
In recent years, the government has been focusing on infrastructure development and has been increasing investment in the sector to push growth of the economy. In the Budget 2023-24, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman increased the outlay for capital investment by 33 per cent to Rs 10 lakh crore.
To meet the higher loan demand from the infrastructure sector, IIFCL has kept its overall borrowing target for FY2024 at around Rs 24,000 crore, including from bonds, multilateral agencies and short-term borrowings from banks. “We hope to raise Rs 17,000 crore through bonds this year in different tranches,” Jaishankar said. It has already raised Rs 500 crore from bonds in the first quarter and is planning to raise Rs 2,000-3,000 crore through bonds in the next one-two months.
In FY2023, the company recorded year-on-year growth of 7.42 per cent in its standalone loan portfolio at Rs 42,271 crore compared to Rs 39,352 crore in FY2022. Its asset quality improved with net non-performing assets (NPA) declining to 1.41 per cent from 3.44 per cent in the previous year and gross NPA to 4.76 per cent from 9.23 per cent in FY2022.
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