Telangana Government To Spend Rs 2,000 Crore To Acquire L&T's Stake In Metro Rail Project

Telangana's government will take over the first phase of the Hyderabad Metro Rail project from Larsen & Toubro Group (L&T) for the sum of Rs 2,000 crore, according to sources cited by PTI on Thursday. It will buy the group's stake in the equity from the concessionaire L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Ltd.

The Telangana state government will also assume the firm's debt of Rs 13,000 crore, the sources told PTI. L&T has around 90% equity in the project. The infrastructure giant had announced that it intends to offload its stake in the Metro Rail project in the previous month.

Spanning about 70 km, their stake in the project was to be sold either to the state or central government through a new special purpose vehicle due to operational and accumulated losses.

Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, along with senior officials of the state government, held a meeting with L&T group CMD SN Subrahmanyan and others on Thursday to discuss the way forward.

"After detailed negotiations, with an objective to expedite the phase 2 approval by Government of India, it was agreed in principle that the state government would take over Phase-I Metro Rail project by taking over the debt of the project, which now stands at about Rs 13,000 crore. Further, the state government will pay about Rs 2,000 crore to L&T towards their equity investment in LTMRHL as a one-time settlement,” sources said.

(With PTI Inputs)