India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd (IIFCL) is aiming at loan sanctions worth over Rs 23,000 crore and disbursements of Rs 14,000 crore in 2021-22 depending on the project pipeline available in the market.
In 2020-21, the government-owned infra financing company recorded the highest ever loan sanctions and disbursements despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The future would be as challenging as it was last year but we would like to do better. Our aim would be to surpass our modest target for ourselves — Rs 23,000 crore for sanction and Rs 14,000 crore for disbursement this year…depending on the kind of projects received,” IIFCL Managing Director P R Jaishankar told PTI.
During 2020-21, IIFCL achieved the highest ever sanctions and disbursements at Rs 20,892 crore and Rs 9,460 crore, respectively, on a standalone basis.
This year, he said, the focus will be more on re-financing, takeout finance and growing the portfolio in the greenfield segment, especially government-sponsored projects.
The company’s asset quality saw improvement as net non-performing assets (NPAs) came down to 5.39 per cent from 9.75 per cent.
Going forward, he said, “we will try and bring down the net NPA to 4 per cent by the end of the current fiscal”.
The gross NPA of the company too declined to 13.9 per cent from 19.70 per cent in the previous financial year.
Regarding cash recovery in NPAs, he said, it increased to over Rs 625 crore in 2020-21, 92 per cent higher than the previous fiscal year.
On the outlook for business, Jaishankar said IIFCL plans to aggressively capture an increased market share by keeping its pricing competitive and lowering the base rate to attract more business and further strengthen its portfolio.
“IIFCL is now in the process of bringing in a market-oriented dynamism in all its activities, with an improved credit policy, segmented risk-based pricing, enhanced efforts for recovery, an active treasury management and digitalisation of monitoring of projects for ensuring progress linked disbursements in projects,” he noted.
