Bangalore-Mysore corridor Phase I almost complete: NICE

Ashok Kheny, MD, Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise says the company’s project to develop 111 km of expressway connecting Bangalore to Mysore is close to its Phase I completion.

Of 62 kms, the company has made 56 kms and is waiting to acquire land for the same. The company is also waiting for approvals to come through for Phase II, III.

Furthermore, Kheny says the company’s board is considering a reverse merger of NICE with BF Utility, that owns 74 percent stake.

Below is the edited transcript of Murali Ashok Kheny's interview with Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Sonia: Let me start of by asking you about the update on the 100 kilometre expressway project from Bangalore to Mysore itself. How much has been completed so far, how much investment has been made into the project and how much more investments would the project require?A: We have broken the project into three phases. Phase I was 62 kilometres of which 56 kilometres have been completed. We are collecting toll approximately between Rs 100 crore to Rs 80 crore per year. We are in the process of developing interchanged land development and are waiting for certain approvals for that. Phase II and phase III hasn't been started though some of the land has been acquired.Unfortunately,project like these get politicised by media like in this project, former prime minister HD Deve Gowda has been involved to been having an agenda only because his family owns several 100 acres of land in the project area. He wants us to denotify it and as you know it is illegal to denotify the notified land and so this is where it is stuck and courts have consistently ruled in our favour. We are hoping that we will finally get the project going.Latha: When will it become commercially generating money at all, I am asking you more from a banker’s point of view, they have been worrying that interest payments have been irregular?A: Yes, but we have restructured it. Now we have been regular and have brought in sub-promoters equity. Even the interest payments are so regular as to match our income generated from toll road. So there isn't any concern about it. Also, we are trying to deduce the burden of some of the land sale that has been happening. We have approximately the same debt as we had- Rs 1,650 crore.Sonia: How much capital will you need to raise and by when would you do that?A: We don’t need to raise any capital. The project is in phases. we have already finished 56 kilometres of   and are left to do another six kilometres of road but unfortunately we don’t have the land since last seven years. Despite having deposited money for the required land we have got just seven acres of land from the government. So it is a question of projects being politicised.In Karnataka, around 42-43 infrastructure projects were signed along with this one. Out of those 43 projects, our's was the only one that survived. Because we have got a three party politics in the state, the JDS, the Congress and the BJP, rest of them have been politicised and killed by bureaucracy and local politics. That is why many companies are not even coming to Karnataka as they cannot handle the political atmosphere and instability and hence they go to other states.