Market showing positive signs as festive season is about to begin, said Anil Yadav, Group CFO, IRB Infrastructure. In his interaction he spoke about various matters including how the industry faces various challenges.

Q: Because of the trucker strike that was there last month as well as the Maratha Morcha – has there been any loss of revenues for you and will government make good the loss in revenues?

A: Any such issue which is there for more than seven days there is provision under concession agreement for compensating those losses. In fact, when the trucker strike was going on that time the traffic had reduced but as now the festive season is about to start in India, we have seen good uptick in traffic numbers in recent weeks.

Q: Was truckers strike more than seven days and does it entitle you to compensation?

A: Yes that was for about 8-9 days, so that entitles for compensation.

Q: Generally what is the traffic growth for five months year to date?

A: Normally they take previous month number and on that basis they have compensated. If suppose your revenue X and now it is X minus something then whatever the difference that will get compensated.

Q: How has traffic growth been in the road where you collect toll if you compare five months of this year to that of last year that is year on year?

A: The first three months was not that great because of the early arrival of heavy monsoon, which led to flooding and other issues. So truck traffic growth was in the range in 3-4 percent only but now from August onwards we have started seeing around 8-10 percent kind of traffic growth and if that momentum continues, then on yearly basis we will yearly traffic growth of 6-7 percent, which is even better than our estimates at the beginning of the year.

Q: With regards to awarding momentum of NHAI – what can you bag, additional orders over the next 12-18 months?

A: Awarding activity will happen around December or January because of code of conduct in place and we are expecting similar kind of run rate what NHAI had awarded last year around 4000-7000 kilometres and out of that we had bagged orderbook of roughly total Rs 9000 crore and this year also we are expecting Rs 8000-9000 crore of order book from NHAI.

Q: How many will complete financial closure you think extra this year?

A: We are on advance stages on the three Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) projects we are having for financial closure and we will be achieving the financial closure for all three in this quarter itself, which is well ahead of the schedule.

First Published:Aug 11, 2018 6:57 PM IST