Korea lends $1 billion for E-way

Mumbai: South Korea will extend a USD 9 billion line of credit and lend an initial USD 1 billion for Maharashtra’s three major projects: the Nagpur-Mumbai Super Expressway, the Kalyan-Dombivali Smart City project and the Bandra Government Colony redevelopment project. The decision came during chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’ recent visit to South Korea. Local banks were not keen to finance the expressway project, also known as Samruddhi Mahamarg, because the land acquisition process is yet to be completed.

Mr Fadnavis held a meeting at Seoul with Korean ministers on Thursday to discuss prospects of enhancing the special strategic partnership between India and the Republic of Korea. The two countries later signed an agreement to establish substantive cooperation. The leaders agreed to work toward drawing upon the proposed for cooperation in infrastructure development, an official who accompanied Mr Fadnavis in the tour said.  

“It was decided that Korea will extend USD 9 billion line of credit and USD 1 billlion for the three major projects,” the official said.

It was also decided that the two countries will take up for detailed discussion the Indian side’s interest in tabling the Samruddhi Mahamarg. The leaders from both the sides agreed to establish an empowered negotiating team comprising relevant officials from the state government,  the Centre as well as Korean counterparts including from the ministry of strategy and finance, the official said.

The negotiating team would, among other things, examine technical aspects of all segments of the Mahamarg, modalities to establish a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that could bring together Indian and Korean State-owned entities to mobilise financing and implementation of the project and ways and modalities to finance the expressway using such an SPV. The team will also check for suitably utilising both the Economic Development Co-operation Fund and EXIM Bank credit offered by Korea, within the parameters of existing national rules and conditions on both sides, the official said.

The Korean President is likely to visit India early next year and the Samruddhi Mahamarg could be one of the projects that would be started though joint financing, the official added.