Exim Bank to raise up to $2 billion in FY21

India’s Export Import (Exim) Bank will look to raise up to $2 billion in the current financial year, subject to business conditions and the spread of the Covid pandemic, the lender’s top executive said on Thursday. The organisation reported a 51% year-on-year (y-o-y) rise in net profit for FY20 to Rs 124 crore.

Exim Bank managing director David Rasquinha said that the institution had raised $1 billion in January. “We do have debt-servicing requirements in the current year, of course. We’ve already cleared a debt-servicing requirement of $500 million in April; we have another $500 million coming up in August, for which we’ve already kept the liquidity ready. So I would say we would be looking at maybe coming back to the international markets towards the end of the calendar year and hopefully, we’ll be looking at raising $1-2 billion,” he said.

Exim Bank’s loan portfolio rose 6.23% y-o-y to Rs 99,446 crore in FY20 and its non-funded portfolio expanded 12.59% to Rs 15,869 crore. Its capital to risk assets ratio improved 106 basis points (bps) to 20.13%. Net non-performing asset (NPA) ratio fell 67 bps to 1.77%.

During FY20, Exim Bank extended 27 lines of credit (LOCs), aggregating $3.4 billion, to support export of projects, goods and services from India. It has built up a portfolio of 259 GOI-LOCs with credit commitments aggregating $5.46 billion, which are at various stages of implementation. The institution supported 38 project export contracts valued at $2.81 billion under its commercial window. An amount of $31.58 million was disbursed during the year under the sanctioned facilities, and the outstanding buyers’ credit under National Export Insurance Account (BC-NEIA) portfolio stood at $1.35 billion as on March 31, 2020.

During FY20, Exim Bank sanctioned funded and non-funded assistance for 16 corporates aggregating Rs 2,837 crore for part financing their overseas investments in eight countries.