Abhishek Agrawal, ED of Godawari Power & Ispat said that the company will be able to reduce its finance cost by around 200 basis points.

“At the start of the year our rating was ‘BBB+’ which last month was upgraded by rating agencies to one was ‘A’ and one was ‘A stable’. We are discussing with the banks and hopefully by end of this month or early next month we should be able to reduce the borrowing cost by 200 basis points,” he said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

Agrawal said that they have repaid Rs 325 crore towards debt. He further added that the operating profits (EBITDA) generated will be used to repay debt.

“Our current debt is around Rs 740 crore. We are confident we can bring it down to Rs 550 crore. This is a conservative figure, but depending on the market, if situation goes in our favour, we can pay more to the banks,” he said.

“We would be repaying from our current cash flows. Whatever EBITDA we are generating from the operations, will be going back to the banks,” he added.

On pellet prices, Agrawal said, “Pellet prices are hovering around – Raipur is around Rs 11,000 and Odisha is around Rs 10,000. The pellet prices are driven by mainly the shortage of iron ore. So it all depends on the availability of iron ore; if the availability of iron ore goes up, then probably the pellet prices would sustain at such levels. If not, then pellet prices might go up further.”

Agrawal added that he expects the current quarter to be better than the quarter gone by.

(Edited by : Santosh Nair)