Jet’s special fares for
Bahrain from several Indian destinations, for enthusiasts travelling
to the
The special fares are valid for return economy class travel.
To avail the offer, passengers must book their tickets by April 30.
The Mumbai-Bahrain base fare of Rs 8,500 excludes applicable taxes
and surcharges.
The fare is Rs 10,500 from
Kolkata, Chennai,
Assocham suggests strategy for financing infra projects
New Delhi, Apr 1 (UNI) With infrastructure projects, especially
arport development, being hit severely by non-availability of
adequate funds, Assocham today suggested a two-pronged strategy
for extending funds to the sector.
This could be done through exposure limit of Indian banking
system and the refinancing facility, the chamber said.
In a note submitted to the PMO, the Planning Commission and
the Cabinet Secretariat, Assocham said, ”many of the infrastructure
projects are confronted with the risk-of-high-capital cost and
low-operating-margins”.
In order to ensure that adequate funds are flowing into the
infrastructure space, Assocham said the government and the
Reserve Bank of
This facility will help banks lend to the infrastructure
at competitive rates which, in turn, will enable the infrastructure
service providers to ensure adequate low cost funding to their
projects thereby increasing the viability.
The current costs for most infrastructure players are in the
region of 12-13 per cent per annum while the ideal rate should be
around 8-9 per cent only, it said.
The refinance could be either by way of a plain simple refinance
at lower rates so that banks can lend at a very competitive rate
or by way of interest sub-vention where the infrastructure service
provider first pays the higher rate and then gets a credit for the
differential interest.
”Given the mammoth size of these projects which require huge
amount of funds, there are several banks and institutions involved
in the financing of such projects as no single financial entity is
capable of funding them alone and therefore prefer to do it
jointly,” the Chamber said.
It said banks have an exposure limit for the sector, individual
groups and also individual entities.
These limits have been proved inadequate over a period of time as
the funding requirements for infrastructure projects have been very
huge and most banks have been continuously been hitting their
sectoral exposure limits as well as group exposure limits.
The limits should be relaxed beyond their current limits
to facilitate banks to increase their exposure for the
requirements of the core sector in the country and support the
high capital outlay of the mega projects.
Also with the spike in the interest rates over the last one
year, the chamber said the capital cost has substantially
increased.
