Telangana government's bid to seek foreign loan fails

Hyderabad: The state government’s plans to get loans from abroad to develop infrastructure facilities in the city have been dashed. The government has got no response from the Brics Bank in China to an application it submitted for a second time, seeking Rs 30,000 crore loan. It also sought loans from Netherland-based Rabo bank to set up four super-specialty hospitals in the city, but this too has failed to materialise.

The government had earlier approached Brics Bank in 2015 as a follow up to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s China visit in August 2014, where he met the bank officials and sought loans. After waiting for two years, the government approached the bank again in vain. The government is now looking at raising funds through infrastructure bonds and loans from national banks.

The government had planned to seek Rs 80,000 crore in all from BRICS Bank to develop roads, flyovers, multi-grade separators and skyways in GHMC limits. The first tranche of it was to be Rs 30,000 crore. The loan was sought to be spent under the Strategic Road Development Progr-amme (SRDP) to improve infrastructure in the city. The state government had submitted proposals to the Centre for approval to secure foreign loans. But the Centre sat on it for over an year and did not accord approval. Early this year, however, the Centre relaxed the rules for states to obtain such loans.

Based on this, the Telangana government again approached BRICS Bank, but has obtained no response. Minister K.T. Rama Rao was supposed to visit China in the last week of June to attend the World Economic Forum meeting there, besides following up on the loan, but the lack of response from BRICS Bank forced him to put off his visit at the last minute. The government has since set up an urban finance and infrastructure development corporation to raise funds from various agencies.