Power Finance Corporation on Wednesday said it will shortly hike its lending rate between 25 to 50 basis points.
“We’ll have to adjust our rates according to current market scene. It will be within May and the hike could be between 25 to 50 basis points,” PFC Executive Director (Finance) Ms Nalini Shastri Vanjani told PTI on the sidelines of PFC roadshow for its FPO issue. The current lending rate of PFC varies between 11.5 per cent and 13 per cent. The power sector lender was also open to finance overseas coal block acquisitions, she said.
“We have small group which looks into financing linkages and one such funding is approved in India. We have not yet taken a final call on overseas funding for such linkages, including coal blocks,” PFC Director (Projects) Mr Rajeev Sharma said.
He said the Corporation had so far received feelers from private power companies through a private bank but no concrete proposal had come till now.
PFC’s 90.7 per cent of loans made to power generation, transmission, distribution, renovation and modernisation projects.
Mr Vanjani said the existing loan portfolio of Rs 3,300 crore in renewable energy would be transferred to a new subsidiary Power Finance Corporation Green Energy Ltd that would focus only in renewable energy projects.
Meanwhile, PFC FPO issue opened on May 10 and will close on May 13 through 100 per cent book-building route with the price band of Rs 193-203 a share. Post issue the capital adequacy will jump to 19.4 per cent against 15.94 per cent now.