The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI)’s mobilisation through infrastructure bonds during this financial year is likely to fall short by Rs 2,800 crore, forcing it to take recourse to borrowing from other sources, thereby increasing its interest liability by 2.5 per cent.

As against targeted Rs 4,500 crore, NHAI would be able to mobilise about Rs 1700 crore. It may also be forced to utilise the overdraft facility.

“The market collection through 54 EC bonds this financial year will not go beyond Rs 1,700 crore. We’ll have to raise money via other resources. That will cost us over 2.5 per cent more in terms of interest rates,” a NHAI official said.

NHAI has managed to raise Rs 1,069.47 crore via 54 EC bonds till October. These bonds are issued primarily to meet the expenditure-resource deficit. The coupon rate for these bonds is 6 per cent per annum. Borrowing from banks or other institutions may come at an interest rate of 8-8.5 per cent.

Another NHAI official said that the shortfall was not a major concern. “The targets are always kept higher. Last year, we raised Rs 1,148 crore. This year, the actual collection would be quite higher than that.

NHAI had raised Rs 1,148.05 crore in 2009-10 as against Rs 1,630.74 crore in 2008-09, and Rs 305.18 crore in 2007-08 through 54 EC bonds.

These bonds are issued to meet the fund requirement within the limit prescribed in the budget under internal and extra budgetary resources.

NHAI has also restructured 16 highway projects to be developed via the public-private-partnership model. Five of these projects are in Tamil Nadu, four in Kerala, three in Bihar and two each in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. “These projects received no responses from private players. The restructuring has been done to make them attractive to investors. This is in addition to 35 projects that were restructured last year,” the NHAI official said.