{"id":42452,"date":"2018-09-19T12:17:50","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T12:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/?p=42452"},"modified":"2018-09-19T12:17:50","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T12:17:50","slug":"nitin-gadkari-cant-get-bankers-to-lend-for-road-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/nitin-gadkari-cant-get-bankers-to-lend-for-road-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Nitin Gadkari can\u2019t get bankers to lend for road projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Risk-averse bankers are slowing construction of infrastructure projects in India, Nitin Gadkari, the country\u2019s minister for road transport and highways, said.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Loans to road contractors and bank guarantees for projects have dried up, threatening to stall India\u2019s plans to build more than 84,000 kilometers (52,195 miles) of roads by 2022, Gadkari said, addressing the Bloomberg India Economic Forum on Tuesday. \u201cFor the sake of industry, sake of investment, sake of contractors, creating jobs, for the sake of economy, we need positive support from banks,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are giving support but it is a slow process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>India\u2019s plan to modernize the highways network requires billions of dollars of investment but the worst bad-loan ratio after Italy among the world\u2019s 20 largest economies has led bankers to shy away from this sector. Public lenders account for 90 percent of the $210 billion of stressed debt on Indian banks\u2019 balance sheets.<\/p>\n<p>Bankers are dithering about lending decisions as they they fear that if a decision goes wrong even 5 to 7 years down the line, they could be subject to probes the way some of their peers are undergoing now, Rajnish Kumar, chairman of State Bank of India, said in May.<\/p>\n<p>State-run National Highways Authority of India last month borrowed 250 billion rupees from the State Bank of India, the country\u2019s largest lender. Yet, most Indian lenders, reeling under the burden of bad debts, need to be convinced that lending to \u201cour roads sector is very safe,\u201d Gadkari said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of road builders will drift towards bonds and money market instruments mainly because of the capacity constraints that banks have,\u201d said Shubham Jain, vice president at ICRA Ltd. \u201cRising interest rates and limited tenures offered by banks will also push developers to consider more bond offerings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>State Bank of India, the country\u2019s largest bank by assets, has about 60 percent to 70 percent of its bad loans in the infrastructure sector, Managing Director Arijit Basu said at the Bloomberg India Economic Forum in Mumbai. That\u2019s one of the reasons why banks were more cautious about lending, whether it\u2019s power or road projects.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have to lend, and yet lend in a risk-mitigated manner,\u201d Basu said. \u201cWe want our banks to be stable and resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>India will continue to raise funds by auctioning stretches of highways to be leased for 30 years in return for upfront funds that can be used to build more roads. The government needs funds for its \u2018Bharatmala\u2019 project that seeks to connect business centers via a 35,000 km network. Almost 10,000 kms were added in the fiscal year ended in March, and contracts for a further 17,000 kilometers were awarded.<\/p>\n<p>The government has decided to exempt electric vehicles and automobiles that run on alternative fuel from permit requirements, Gadkari said.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Risk-averse bankers are slowing construction of infrastructure projects in India, Nitin Gadkari, the country\u2019s minister for road transport and highways, said. Loans to road contractors and bank guarantees for projects have dried up, threatening to stall India\u2019s plans to build more than 84,000 kilometers (52,195 miles) of roads by 2022, Gadkari said, addressing the Bloomberg [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42454,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42452\/revisions\/42454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}