Govt hikes authorised capital of NEIA to Rs 4K cr

New Delhi: The authorised capital of National Export Insurance Account has been raised to Rs 4,000 crore to help boost project exports, the government said on Wednesday.

"The Union Cabinet gave its approval for financial support to the NEIA for overseas project exports by increasing the authorised corpus of the NEIA Trust to Rs 4,000 crore with risk underwriting capacity up to 20 times of the actual corpus," said an official statement.

This is as against the present leverage of 10 times. The leveraging would be done at the base amount of USD 5 billion drawn out of the country's foreign currency reserves used for on-lending by way of buyer's credit with NEIA cover, it said.

"The proposal will increase the capacity of the NEIA Trust to underwrite more large size projects in difficult countries with reasonably significant Indian content," it added.

Project exports will give sustained earning income of greater lifecycle durability and help create jobs for foreign exchange earnings, the statement said.

Budgetary support to NEIA has been Rs 956 crore and this will be augmented through further budget support.

NEIA was set up in 2006 as a public trust by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to promote project exports.

NEIA also supports project exports which have long credit period for repayment and are beyond the underwriting capacity of the Export Credit Guarantee Corporation.