Need to re-introduce S4A-like debt recast scheme

Mumbai: National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development’s (NaBFID) managing director Rajkiran Rai G has said there is a need to re-introduce the Scheme for Sustainable Structuring of Stressed Assets (S4A) scheme to help infrastructure finance in the future.

Rai said at present, there is not a single asset calling out for such help but it is essential to get a facility which will enable ‘rightsizing of debt’ and make it more sustainable. He also said that given the present system, no entity can exploit the S4A scheme by indulging in things like the evergreening of loans.

The RBI had introduced the S4A scheme in 2016 and ended in February 2018. Debt was split into sustainable and unsustainable based on cash flows under the scheme, which was focused on corporate loans and also had a threshold above which an account could qualify. “We need to see the context in which it was brought and how it was used. And now, we are talking in a totally different context,” Rai said, pushing for the introduction of the S4A scheme.