New Delhi: The Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) announced on Wednesday that its board approved raising of long term funds not exceeding Rs 750 crore by way of external commercial borrowings, foreign currency borrowings, non-convertible debentures, term loans or through any other debt instrument in one or more tranches.

The development comes at a time when the tourism and hospitality sector has been among the worst hit in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing travel bans. On Friday, IHCL had announced that it plans to raise Rs 150 crore by way of non-convertible debentures (NCDs).

IHCL had said the NCDs were proposed to be listed on the wholesale debt market segment of the National Stock Exchange of India and the tenor of the instrument would be three years from the deemed date of allotment. "Three weeks ago, RBI announced continuing of targeted long term repo operations (LTRO) for three years making available about Rs 100,000 crore for banks which enables banks to borrow at repo rate effectively and kind of on lend to the industry in 15-20 days.

There are a lot of advantages of that programme," IHCL CFO Giridhar Sanjeevi told ET last week.

"We also had a debenture repayment coming up on April 21.

While we are repaying the debenture, we are refinancing through another set of debentures for Rs 150 crore," he added.