Lender approval awaited for Haldia Petrochemicals Limited rights issue

26-Feb-14

Haldia Petrochemicals Limited (HPL) Board has approved the proposed rights issue of the company two months back, approval from the lenders is awaited, as per PTI. As per a source, a meeting has been scheduled in a few days with the lenders. Then industry minister and chairman of HPL Partha Chatterjee announced that rights issue was the only way for an immediate infusion of capital in the company. HPL had planned to issue 52 crore equity shares at Rs 25.10 per share on rights basis which was expected to fetch Rs 1,300 crore to the company. However, the other promoter Purnendu Chatterjee of TCG expressed reservations on the proposed rights issue and suggested alternative means to raise capital for the company. Sources said that the capacity utilisation has increased to 83% at 200 tons/hour from as low as 90 tons/hour a few weeks back. This has been made possible as HPL had signed an agreement with state-owned MSTC Limited which had agreed to open L/Cs on behalf of the company to buy naphtha from oil companies. HPL has managed to bring down naphtha imports to negligible levels and source from IOC and other oil PSUs like BPCL and HPCL.