India’s IL&FS Plans to Sell $1 Billion of Bonds to Build Roads

(Bloomberg) -- Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. plans to raise more than $1 billion selling rupee-denominated bonds in India and overseas to fund road and other transportation projects in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The Mumbai-based company will sell 50 billion rupees ($742 million) of obligations in India in the next six months to help its units with projects, Ramesh Bawa, managing director and chief executive officer of the company, told reporters on Thursday. It will also offer another $300 million of offshore rupee notes, also known as masala bonds, he said.

The company is betting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aim to spend as much as $14.5 billion in the year to March on expanding India’s network of roads and ports, will attract investors to the debt sale. India, which stands below Namibia and Azerbaijan in the World Economic Forum’s infrastructure ranking, is targeting to build 42 kilometers of roads a day, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said last month.

IL&FS expects to have a rating on the masala bonds this month and plans to sell the notes in January, Bawa said. He’s targeting a coupon of “around 9 percent” on the bonds.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dhwani Pandya in Mumbai at dpandya11@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pratish Narayanan at pnarayanan9@bloomberg.net, Arijit Ghosh, Karthikeyan Sundaram