The government-backed bad loan aggregator, National Asset Reconstruction Co (NARCL), has made a INR 270 crore offer for Pink City Expressway Private Limited (PCEPL), the company which was formed to build, operate and maintain the six-lane Gurugram-Kotputli-Jaipur section of the Delhi-Jaipur highway.
PCEPL has INR 1,761 crore of outstanding loans and another INR 30 crore of bank guarantees, according to rating agency Care, which means lenders can recover about 15% of their claims from NARCL.
The bad bank acquires loans by paying 15% of the amount in cash and the rest in security receipts (SRs), which are to be matched with recovery over time. These SRs are guaranteed by the government, valid for five years, to be invoked by banks in case of resolution or liquidation of the bad loan.
“The PCEPL offer was finalised last week after NARCL completed all its financial and legal due diligence. Individual banks have to approve the transaction for it to be completed,” a person familiar with the process said on condition of anonymity. NARCL did not reply to ET’s emailed queries till press time.
About a dozen banks, led by IDBI Bank and including Canara Bank, IFCL and State Bank of India (SBI), are lenders to the project.
The offer is the first from NARCL to banks in more than four months and the first since changes in the top management of the bad bank. Former SBI managing director Diwakar Gupta took over as NARCL chairman in early December, months after Karnam Sekar quit in August amid differences over the functioning of the institution.
Earlier this month, NARCL CEO Natarajan Sundar quit and Canara Bank chief general manager P Santhosh was sent on deputation.
“There is now a concentrated effort to push through the takeover of assets which have long been in the pipeline. PCEPL has been marked as NPA since 2020 and there has been no other option for banks to recover their dues. NARCL is hoping to expedite recovery through arbitration claims pending with the NHAI,” said a second person aware of the matter.
PCEPL is a joint venture of Emirates Trading Agency from Dubai, KMC Group of Hyderabad and IKSHU Infrastructure. The company had a 12-year agreement which was terminated because of delays. NHAI has taken over the project.
The offer for a road asset marks a change in strategy for NARCL, which was earlier touted to be an aggregator of large bad debts in the banking system.
“Banks have not been getting any money from this account so it’s best to sell it and wait for any arbitration claims that could come,” said a third person.
