Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) will be raising $800 million from Korea EximBank (K-Exim) to finance the purchase of telecoms gears for its 4G launch scheduled for the first quarter of 2015 from vendors such as Samsung in Korea.
It is believed that K-Exim will fund about 60% of the amount while standing guarantees for the remaining. The rest will be bankrolled by a number of global banks, three each from Korea and Japan, including ANZ and HSBC. According to RIL, the agreements are expected to be signed within the next 2 days.
RIL said that this will be the first international financing for the company after it borrowed $1.5 billion through external commercial borrowing (ECB) for its spectrum payments in 2010. Reliance Jio has been working towards the 2015 launch of its 4G services, targeting to cater 5,000 towns and cities, covering more than 90% of urban India and to launch its services in over 215,000 villages in India, said RIL's spokespersons.
