ASHLEY DO ROSARIO
PANAJI
Following persistent debt repayment and internal financial issues, the GMR Infrastructure group has off-loaded 49 per cent of its airport business casting a dark shadow over whether
work on the greenfield international airport at Mopa will actually take off any time soon.
On Thursday, hours after the Supreme Court lifted the suspension of the Environment Clearance (EC) for the project which halted work nearly a year ago, a GMR group spokesperson said: “We plan to commence work for the new airport in Goa soon in compliance with Supreme Court orders.”
But these words are unlikely to translate into action at the Mopa plateau anytime soon if internal financial changes which GMR Infra Limited itself has disclosed ironically on the very same day the Supreme Court lifted curbs on construction, are any indication.
In a regulatory filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange, the company said it was selling 49 per cent of its airport business to investors including the Tata Group’s TRIL Urban Transport
Private Limited, an affiliate
of General Insurance Company and SSG Capital Management.
According to the intimation filed under Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) listing obligations, an amended and restated shares subscription and purchase agreement and shareholders agreement has already been executed to give effect the stake sale to the three investors.
The regulatory filing was made on Thursday itself by GMR Infrastructure Ltd’s company secretary and compliance officer T Venkat Ramana. That these changes in the financial management control of GMR Infra Ltd will impact the fiscal condition and operations of its subsidiary -- GMR Goa International Airport Limited (GGIAL) -- which is the Concessionaire to build, operate and transfer in 40 years the Mopa international airport is anyone’s guess.
The company did not immediately reply to mailed queries on the developments. An official of the GMR group’s Corporate Communications Division said, they will require time to respond officially to the query whether the changes in stake-holding of the parent company will impact GGIAL which is constructing the Mopa airport.
The company also did not specifically say when work at Mopa will actually start or whether payments were pending to vendors and service providers contracted by it for work done at the site before the EC was suspended in January last year.
The company also sought more time to respond to yet another query whether the loan underwriting agreement it had entered into with Axis Bank Limited to raise a loan of Rs 1300 crores for the construction of the airport was still effective.
The Mopa airport project is estimated to cost approximately Rs 3000 crore (USD 550 million) and is being constructed over nearly 1500 acres of the sprawling plateau in the northernmost taluka of Pernem.
The Goa government’s liability is limited to providing the land which it has already fulfilled. Raising funds and executing the project has to be shouldered by GGIAL after it won the tender and signed the 40-year concession agreement in November 2016,
days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone on November 8, 2016.
The airport is being constructed in two phases, the first of which it is being claimed will be completed before March 2022, an ambitious deadline given the uncertainty of when recommencement of work will actually take off at the Mopa plateau amid the new developments in the financial management pattern of GMR Infrastructure Limited.
