Today, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) floated Government Guaranteed Bond of 10 Years maturity to raise a fund of Rs 8500 Cr. The unsecured, redeemable, listed, taxable, Non-Convertible Debenture of face value of Rs 10 Lakh each at par, with a base issue of size of Rs 1000 Cr with option to retain over-subscription upto Rs 7500 Cr, aggregating to total issue size of Rs 8500 Cr was offered on 21.09.2020 from 10:30 Hrs to 12:00 Hrs on BSE through Electronic Bidding Platform (EBP).

At the close, the bidding, bids worth Rs 17,183.10 Cr was received from 229 investors. The issue was subscribed over 2.02 times of the total issue size. The BSNL is expected to retain

We have raised Rs 8,500 crore from sovereign bonds. We have received 229 bids and Rs 3,700 crore were subscribed by qualified institutional investors such as ICICI Lombard, Punjab & National Bank, Postal Life Insurance, and SBI Life Insurance,” BSNL Chairman Pravin Kumar Purwar said.

The sovereign bonds, according to the state-controlled telecom company were oversubscribed with a total size amounting to Rs 17,183 crore, and the company has accepted the offers at an interest rate of 6.79% per annum.

The raising of Government Guaranteed Bonds of Rs 8500 Cr is a part of the Cabinet approval of BSNL Revival package in October 2019, which also included VRS to employees of age more than 50 years, Land Asset Monetisation, 4G Spectrum allocation and MTNL merger with BSNL.