Vedanta ties up funds for most of $4.1 bn debt maturing in FY13

London-listed Vedanta Resources has tied up funds to repay 95 per cent of its $4.1 billion debt maturing in the current fiscal.

The mining-metals-oil conglomerate, led by Anil Agrawal, had a gross debt of $17 billion as on March, 2012, including $7.7 billion debt of its subsidiaries. Of this, $4.1 billion debt is maturing in the current fiscal.

"About 95 per cent of the total debt to be repaid is already tied up and balance is in the advanced stages of tie up," a company spokesperson said in an e-mailed reply.

Replying to a query, he said "a large part of the debt is planned to be repaid from committed long-term facilities. A portion of the debt maturing would be repaid from the internal cash generation and existing cash balances".

According to a company presentation, the Anil Agarwal-led firm has refinanced $0.95 billion loans out of the total $4.1 billion maturing debt in the current fiscal.

Besides, it has rolled over $1.7 billion debt into long-term loans and will repay $0.3 billion through internal cash, while $0.7 billion is being used as revolving working capital facility, the presentation showed.

In 2011-12, the gross finance cost of Vedanta had increased by 63 per cent to $1.17 billion, largely due to increase in its average gross debt by $4.86 billion, which was used to acquire Cairn India.

However, this also led to company announcing restructuring of its operations in February. According to the restructuring exercise, Vedanta's all operations, except Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia, will come under one roof -- Sesa Sterlite -- and is expected to be completed by December.

According to the presentation, this will also reduce company's debt service liability by 61 per cent to $3.9 billion (from $9.8 billion of FY'12) as it will be transferring majority of the loans, taken to acquire Cairn India, to Sesa Sterlite.

Besides, its debt service cost would get reduced to $190 million in the current fiscal from $500 million of 2011-12.

The company, which is at present sitting on cash and cash equivalents of $6.9 billion, also has undrawn funding facilities of $2.9 billion, the presentation showed.