Adani's petrochemical plant inches closer to getting a ₹17,000-cr lifeline from SBI-led consortium

livemint.com:

₹17,000 crore, amounting to 60-70% of its capital expenditure requirement. The loan, from a consortium led by India's largest lender SBI, will be part of a financial closure programme for Adani Petrochemicals Ltd’s coal-to-polyvinyl chloride plant, which would be India's largest PVC manufacturing facility once completed. The group had in March last year halted the project saying it had decided to hold major equipment procurement and site construction activities pending financial closure, following the Hindenburg report that had alleged financial fraud at Adani Group companies.

Three months later, though, in July, the group resumed work on the petrochemical plant, which requires an overall capex of ₹25,000-27,000 crore, or about $3 billion). “An SBI-led consortium will finance around ₹17,000 crore (about $2 billion) for the project," said a person in the know of the development. Mint had in July 2022 reported that Adani Group had approached SBI for a ₹14,000 crore loan to build a the petrochemical plant in Mundra.

The agreement on the loan was finalised in March and SBI will shortly start onboarding other lenders, said another person familiar with the plans. “The list of lenders is not final yet. SBI would downsell portions of the ₹17,000 crore loan to other banks," the second person said.

In financial parlance, downsell, or sell-down, refers to the selling of a loan portfolio by a bank to other banks and non-banking financial companies. It is a standard practice in infrastructure financing for banks to downsell portions of large loan exposures. Adani Group and SBI did not immediately reply to queries on the loan plan.