Shipping Corporation of India may place orders for 24 ships in FY12

Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) is planning to place orders for 24 ships this financial year. The delivery for the 31 vessels the company had ordered two years ago will starting this year, Business-Standard reports.

SCI Director (finance) BK Mandal said: “The capex for the current year is Rs 3,700 crore which includes fresh orders that we will be placing and some capex for the existing orders, for which we have to make payments. It’ss a mix of both. We will be ordering 24 new vessels this year, including cape-size, bulk carriers, tankers and container vessels.”

He said the company will be raising $500-600 million in the current financial year through external commercial borrowings (ECBs), as interest rates in the international market is lower than the Indian financial market. The money will be used to fund the capex. “We normally follow the 80:20 debt to equity ratio and the interest rates are not high for us as we go for ECBs.”

SCI Chairman S Hajara said the company has plans to spend Rs 3,700 crore on its expansion in FY12 and the thrust will be on expanding its off-shore fleet. “Of the 31 vessels that are on order, there are plenty of off-shore vessels.”

He said SCI would like to increase its presence in off-shore operations. “At present, it is a very small percentage of our total fleet but we have plans to go in a bigger way than what we are today.”
SCI Director Arun Gupta said: “Out of the 31 vessels on order, 10 are off-shore vessels. In future, we have plans to go into jack-up rigs.

There are lots of opportunities in the off-shore segment and definitely we would like to explore them.” Out of the 10 off-shore vessels, nine will be delivered this year.
(Source:http://en.portnews.ru)