Reliance Petroleum -- a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries (Mukesh Ambani) -- has raised $1.5 billion through a syndicated loan arranged by 14 domestic and international banks.

The loan will be used to part-finance the company's Rs.25,000 crore ($6 billion) Jamnagar refinery project that involves in setting up of a 27 million tpa petroleum refinery and a 0.9 million tpa polypropylene plant. Reliance is also planning to raise around $1-1.3 billion through a domestic initial public offering, also to finance the refinery project.

The borrowing programme is reportedly India's largest offshore syndicated loan ever. The maturity period of ten years also represents the longest maturity for any overseas borrowing. Usually, international debt has a maturity period of 5-7 years.

The clutch of 14 banks included ABN Amro, Bank of America, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, BNP Paribas, ICICI Bank, HSBC, State Bank of India and others.

Also See:

Reliance's Jamnagar refinery expansion through SPV (24-Jan-06)