New Delhi: Over a year after the lending major IL&FS started defaulting on its commmercial papers and the massive corporate rot came to the fore, the cash balance of the group stands at over Rs 5,300 crore.
The one year progress report of resolution and restructuring of crisis-hit group, released on October 1, said that the board under Uday Kotak is building a ‘cash conservation culture’ and has significantly increased the cash balance of the group.
Highlighting the increase in cash reserve, the report said: “Building cash conservation culture – significant increase. (As of) August 31, 2019 balance > Rs 5,300 crore.”
There seems to be a major jump in cash reserves as, according to the balance sheet of the group for the financial year 2017-18, under its tainted previous board, its cash and cash equivalents stood at Rs 2,407.29 crore as of March 31, 2018.
IL&FS, in its progress report, also said that it has expedited the recovery of loans made to non-IL&FS group entities and so far Rs 1,200 crore has been recovered from such firms. It has rationalised its expenditure and its wage bill has reduced by 45 per cent.
It further said that resolution plans for all its 302 entities are ready and so far, debts of Rs 36,400 crore have been addressed. Three entities with a total debt of Rs 5,100 crore have been successfully restructured, the progress report mentioned. The group and its entities have a total external debt of Rs 94,216 crore.
Speaking to the media here Tuesday, the Non-Executive Chairman of IL&FS said that the board is confident on restructuring or resolving 50 per cent of the total debt.
“We should be able to recover, restructure and/or resolve… which includes green companies as well… We believe that we should be above the 50 per cent mark… We are quite confident that we should cross 50 per cent based on our best estimates and judgements,” Kotak said.
Public process has been launched for 65 entities including 54 domestic and 11 international entities and the public process for 11 others will be launched soon.
Regarding the challenges in the asset monetisation process, the presentation said that large number of simultaneous processes, lack of centralized database, delay in audited accounts are among the major challenges. It also described the external economic environment as a challenge.
It also mentioned the ‘coercive’ creditor actions such as auto debit, and non-creation of FDs in contravention of court orders and said that a formal approval for resolution framework is awaited.
It said that the new board has navigated through complexity and developed resolution plan for all 302 entities and the going concern status has been maintained to preserve value for all stake-holders. The board has formulated a unique resolution framework to balance interests of all stake-holders, it added.
(IANS)