Toll revenues went up by 17 percent in February for IRB Infrastructure Developers. To understand if the trend will continue going ahead, CNBC-TV18 spoke to Tushar Kawedia, Chief Finance Officer of the company.

He said, “In February 2022, we witnessed robust growth in toll collections and improved with higher double-digit numbers or more than double-digit for all our projects. This is on the backdrop of economic opening and this has helped us achieve a higher toll number for all the projects.”

Kawedia said that toll collections were not impacted by COVID during the first two months of 2022. He expects tariff hike provisions to be higher next year.

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“For next year, we believe, because of higher WPI in the current fiscal the tariff high revision for the project will be on a higher side for next year and on the expected GDP growth around 9 percent, will also support our revenue growth,” he said.

On revenue growth, he said that it will be in the range of 14-15 percent for next year. He mentioned that the company has been able to achieve financial closure for several projects.

He said, “We have already achieved financial closure for a couple of projects wherein we are just waiting for the appointed date and the revenue will start contributing from those projects as well.”

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On debt, he said that the company has been able to reduce it substantially, however, he added that there will be a rise in finance costs.

“In Q3 we did a preferential allotment of Rs 5,300 crore from strategic and financial investors and with that issue, we have substantially reduced our debt at the standalone level, which is Rs 3,200 crore plus, which will help us reduce finance cost in the coming quarters,” said Kawedia.

For the entire interview, watch the accompanying video