Air India board mulls raising Rs 3,000 cr

National Aviation Company of India Ltd, which owns national carrier Air India, today discussed its plan for raising around Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) to meet its working capital requirements, among others.

The board meeting of the state-owned airlines was also attended by Arvind Jadhav, for the first time since he took over as Nacil CMD after the sudden exit of erstwhile chairman Raghu Menon from the company.

However, sources in the company said no final decision could be taken as the issue would be discussed with the new government and the civil aviation ministry.

Air India has already raised a debt of Rs 14,600 crore (Rs 146 billion) which is being used to buy its fleet of new aircraft. Experts have been saying that more debt would put additional burden on the already overleveraged aviation companies.

According to a recent report by international aviation consultancy firm Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, the three full service carriers -- Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher -- have a total debt of $8 billion which is almost equal to the losses of the international airlines.

According to sources in the erstwhile civil aviation ministry, Air India has incurred losses of Rs 3,000 crore in 2008-09, which is more than double the losses it incurred the previous year. Its accumulated losses come to Rs 4,334 crore (Rs 43.34 billion).