Why bankers continue to bet on Adani’s infrastructure plans

The conglomerate’s debt rose 40% in just one year. Yet, lenders remain confident in its long-gestation projects.

The Adani group positions itself as a champion of new infrastructure. Undeterred by the costs involved, it is happy to rack up debt with this goal in mind.

The Ahmedabad-based group’s consolidated borrowings rose about 40% by the end of the 2021-22 at Rs 2.2 lakh crore, as against Rs 1.57 lakh crore in 2020-21. This makes it India’s fourth largest corporate borrower, behind the Tata group (Rs 2.89 lakh crore), Reliance Industries (Rs 2.66 lakh crore) and the Aditya Birla Group (Rs 2.29 lakh crore). 

We wrote in September last year about the Adani group’s mountain of debt and …

Author

Advait Palepu

Advait is a financial journalist and a former writer at The Morning Context. Here, he wrote on India’s banks, the wider financial services industry and the fintech ecosystem. He has previously worked with the Economic and Political Weekly, Business Standard, BloombergQuint and MediaNama, where he covered everything from the Reserve Bank of India to fintech policy.

Writer

advait@mailtmc.com

Mumbai