Govt pushes back Air India restructuring plans by three months
16 Aug 2011
New Delhi: The government said Friday it would firm up financial restructuring plans of the near-bankrupt carrier over the next three months. This information comes just ahead of a critical Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting scheduled for 17 August.
"The exercise of finalising the financial restructuring plan and restructuring of loans would take about three months," civil aviation minister Vayalar Ravi told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.
The GoM, headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, is looking into Air India's turnaround and financial restructuring plans that have been prepared by the State Bank of India's financial advisory arm, SBI Caps.
The debt-ridden carrier had earlier sent a proposal to the civil aviation ministry for permission to convert its short term loans into long-term ones, thereby saving interest payments of up to Rs1,000 crore per annum.
Air India is also involved in talks with a consortium of public sector banks, led by the SBI, for restructuring its working capital loan of around Rs22,000 crore.
