RIL issues ₹7,706 crore guarantee for Samsung's 5G equipment supply to Jio

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₹7,706 crore in favour of Samsung India Electronics for extending credit to its subsidiary Reliance Jio for supply of telecom equipment, the company said on Wednesday. “The guarantee issued by the company is a continuing guarantee until all obligations are fulfilled by RJIL (Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.).

RJIL is in complete compliance with all its obligations towards SIEPL (Samsung India Electronics Private Limited), and accordingly, the guarantee does not have any adverse impact on the company," RIL said in a statement. The letter of guarantee for sourcing equipment comes close on the heels of Jio tying up $2.2 billion in funding from Swedish Export Credit Agency (EKN) in financial year ended March 2023, the proceeds of the which will be used to finance the equipment and services of Jio’s pan-India 5G rollout.

“The transaction was heavily oversubscribed in the primary syndication market by global lenders across geographies," Reliance Industries said in its annual report. Jio has committed an investment of ₹2 trillion for providing pan-India 5G services, having started network rollouts from October last year.

As of March 2023, Jio had launched its 5G services across 2,300-plus cities/towns and targets to achieve all-India coverage by December this year. In its annual report, Reliance Industries said that the company, along with its subsidiary Jio Infocomm, has tied up $3 billion equivalent through syndicated term loan facilities.

Jio had previously announced equipment purchase worth $2.1 billion from Swedish network equipment provider Ericsson. Jio had said last year that it has inked agreements with global network equipment providers Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Cisco for rolling out 5G network across the country.