Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Group to tap unused credit line of more than billion dollars with Indian banks

Vedanta Resources, owned by Anil Agarwal, is dependent on the Indian public sector banks for its future refinancing given its existing credit line of more than a billion dollars with the Indian banks.

The group's net debt after adjusting the cash component of $ 3.5 billion is around $11.8 billion.

Clearly, the success of the refinancing exercise in the coming months is closely linked to the support of major public sector banks, such as the State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda, and Union Bank of India for releasing the sanctioned amount for Vedanta's ongoing projects.

The big lenders from the private sector are Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and IndusInd Bank.

According to sources, Vedanta Group is considering a mix of new lending banks and also unused credit lines from SBI, Bank of Baroda, Axis, and other consortium partner banks, which can help the company refinance its debt in the coming months.

In fact, the Vedanta Group has also been able to attract newer banks like the Bank of Maharashtra for a loan facility last year.

A mail sent to the Group remained unanswered at the time of publishing this story.

The Indian banking institutions have rupee loan exposure of $6.73 billion in the Vedanta Group's total gross debt of $15.3 billion. In fact, a large proportion of the $8.57. billion is in foreign currency loans.

There are also reports in the market of the group being leveraged.

Vedanta Group, however, has already announced a deleveraging commitment over the next three years. In terms of the repayments of long-term debt of $13.9 billion, the Group has $1.2 billion due by the second half of 2022-23, $4.1 billion by 2023-24, $3.9 billion by 2024-25 and $4.7 billion by 2025-26 and beyond.

The entire Group’s debt is divided into two parts: the holding company, the London-based Vedanta Resources, a globally diversified natural resources giant, has about $8 billion and the remaining $7 billion plus is, at the consolidated level, with the Indian entity, Vedanta Ltd. Vedanta Ltd had ended the FY2021-22 with total income of Rs 1,35,332 crore and net profit of Rs 23,710 crore.

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