National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has pre-paid loans of worth ₹56,000 crore during the current fiscal, helping the state-owned agency to save interest cost of around ₹1,200 crore, a senior government official said on Sunday.
The official told PTI that NHAI’s total debt at the beginning of the current fiscal year was pegged at ₹3.35 lakh crore, which stood at about ₹2.76 lakh crore at the end of third quarter of 2024-25 fiscal year.
He further said that around ₹15,700 crore has been pre-paid from the InvIT monetisation proceeds, while ₹40,000 crore prepayment of loan has been made to National Small Saving Fund ( ₹30,000 crore) and State Bank of India ( ₹10,000 crore), which charge high interest rates.
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“NHAI is successfully reducing its debt liability,” the official added.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her last year’s budget had retained the allocation to NHAI at ₹1.68 lakh crore for 2024-25.