This article attempts to capture investment intentions in fixed capital by private companies and joint business sectors, as a barometer of short-term business sentiment. The total cost of projects assisted by the select banks / financial institutions went up significantly in 2016-17; however, the actual capital expenditure, during 2016-17 by the private corporate sector declined for the sixth successive year.

1. Introduction

Capital expenditure (capex) of the private corporate sector is a key lead indicator of the investment climate in the economy. While these expenditures are set out in published annual accounts of companies, they are available with a considerable lag. In this article, an attempt has been made to analyse from the financiers’ side - the banking sector and financial institutions¹; external commercial borrowings (ECBs)²/ foreign currency convertible bonds (FCCBs); initial public offerings (IPOs)/ follow-on public offerings (FPOs)/ rights issues; foreign direct investment (FDI) and private placements for the year 2016-17. Based on the phasing plans (ex ante) furnished by the companies at the time of appraisal, an estimate of the likely level of capex that would have been made during the year is obtained along with some tentative projections for 2017-18.

The rest of the article is organised in four sections. Section 2 outlines the methodology, including scope, coverage and limitations. Section 3 addresses the projects assisted or financed during 2016-17 and funding thereof. Section 4 describes the distributional aspects of projects over region and industries. Section 5 presents the outlook for corporate investment for 2017-18.

2. Methodology

The methodology adopted for estimation of capex is based on Rangarajan(1970)³. Briefly this involves estimation of capex based on projects in the private corporate sector that are financially assisted by banks/FIs. Details were obtained from banks/FIs and those financed through other sources such as ECBs/FCCBs/IPOs/FPOs/rights issues, ensuring that each project enters the information set only once, even if it is financed through more than one channel. Apart from banks/FIs, data are culled out of databases internal to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as well as information provided by Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Projects not financed through any of the above mentioned channels or of a size lower than ₹ 100 million are not covered. Projects with private ownership below 51 per cent or undertaken by trusts, central and state governments, and educational institutions are also excluded.

By combining the information from various sources detailed above, an ex ante estimate of projects planned (investment intention) during a year is developed. Phasing details are applied to this estimation to obtain annual capex levels over the period of implementation. A caveat to be noted that it is assumed that companies adhere to their ex ante expenditure plans. These estimates differ in scope and methodology from the ex post estimates of corporate fixed investment available in the National Accounts Statistics (NAS) in view of the possibility that some of the ex ante intentions do not fructify into realised investment.

3. Projects Assisted/Financed: 2016-17

In 2016-17, 547 projects with a total cost of ₹ 1,828 billion were sanctioned financial assistance by banks/FIs. In addition, ECBs/FCCBs to the tune of ₹ 224 billion were contracted by 346 companies (Table 3) and 29 companies, which did not avail of financing from the banks/FIs, raised ₹ 12 billion for their capex needs through domestic equity issues (Table 4). Altogether, 922 companies made investment plans in 2016-17 aggregating ₹ 2,064 billion as against 700 companies with investment intentions totalling ₹ 1,351 billion in 2015-16.

Capex on a project is generally spread over multiple years. Companies are required to indicate the proposed plan for such expenditure while applying for financial assistance from lenders. The phasing details indicated that around 40 per cent (₹ 728 billion) of the total proposed expenditure would be spent in 2016-17, 23 per cent (₹ 420 billion) in 2017-18 and 20 per cent (₹ 372 billion) beyond. Around 17 per cent of total cost of the projects assisted in 2016-17 was spent during 2013-14 to 2015-16 (Table 1).

Thus, the aggregate capex planned to be incurred in 2016-17 showed a marginal improvement over the previous year. The large increase in sanctions by banks/ FIs in 2016-17 did not translate into a commensurate increase in the envisaged capex due to the higher share of high value or mega projects with well-spread phasing plans.

Capex planned to be incurred from resources raised from abroad declined by 48.6 per cent from its level a year ago.

The capital market (equity route) enabled financing of envisaged capex of ₹36 billion (total under column 11 of Table 4) in 2016-17, which was significantly higher than in the previous year.

In sum, it is assessed that a total capex of ₹ 1,548 billion would have been incurred by the private corporate sector in 2016-17, of which ₹883 billion would be from fresh sanctions during the year. The year 2016-17 marked the sixth successive annual contraction in the private corporate sector’s capex plans (Table 5).

In recent years, private placement of debt and FDI haveassumed prominence as alternative source of capex financing. In particular, mobilisation of funds throughprivate placement of debt has risen successively since 2014-15 and rose 33 per cent over the previous year(Table 6).

FDI inflows – equity, re-invested earnings and other capital have also risen continuously since 2012-13 (Table 7), with an increase of 11.2 per cent in 2016- 17 over the previous year. As the end-use of the funds raised through private placements of debenture/ bonds and FDI is not available as required, they have not been considered for this article.

4. Distributional Characteristics of Projects:

There was a rise in the number of infrastructure projects, i.e. those relating to power, construction, roads and bridges, and ports and airports, which accounted for 70 per cent of the total cost of projects sanctioned in 2016-17. Within the infrastructure sector, the power sector (45 per cent) dominated whereas the construction sector recorded the highest increase in share (Chart 1 and Annex-I).

The size-wise distribution of the projects sanctioned assistance showed an increase in the number of mega projects (₹ 50 billion and above), which constituted 17 per cent of the total project cost. There were 41 high value projects (₹ 10 billion - ₹ 50 billion), with a share of 42 per cent in the total project cost (Annex-II).

The location of a project is typically selected on the basis of factors such as accessibility of raw material, availability of skilled labour, adequate infrastructure, market size, and growth prospects. Data for the last five years (2012-13 to 2016-17) showed that 62 per cent of the projects were predominantly taken up in the states of Gujarat, Odisha, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka (Chart 2a).

The share of ‘multi states’ projects has halved in the recent period, probably reflecting the bottlenecks in obtaining clearances from multiple state authorities (Chart 2b).

Gujarat accounted for the highest share (22.7 per cent) followed by Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu in that order. Andhra Pradesh recorded a fall in its share from the previous year while Gujarat gained (Chart 3).

Power sector projects occupied a major share in all these states with the exception of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu where the construction industry had a majority of projects with 54.3 per cent and 67 per cent, respectively. Other than power, the industries with sizeable planned investment include textiles and transport equipment and part industries in Gujarat, cement and roads and bridges in Karnataka and pharmaceutical and drugs in Telangana.

Investment in new projects occupied the largest share at 78.9 per cent of the total cost of projects financed by banks/FIs. Expansion and modernisation constituted 9.9 per cent of the total project cost (Annex-IV).

5. Outlook on Investment for 2017-18

The near term outlook for new investment in the Indian economy appears to be improving, as reflected in continued intentions to commission projects in power and construction sectors, in the first half of 2017-18. FDI and private placement of debt has gained momentum and should boost financing of capex in the year. Although there was a seasonal drop in new project announcements in Q1, the investment climate may improve in subsequent quarters in view of business sentiment polled in various surveys and policy initiatives on GST and FDI. Based on the projects which have been sanctioned in preceding years, the planned capex could amount to ₹ 694 billion, in 2017-18, a small improvement over the previous year. Based on the assessment of pipeline projects already undertaken, an additional ₹ 854 billion worth of capex would have to come from new investment intentions to match the level estimated for 2016-17.

* Prepared in the Corporate Studies Division of the Department of Statistics and Information Management. The previous study titled ‘Private Corporate Investment: Growth in 2015-16 and Prospects for 2016-17’ was published in the September 2016 issue of the Reserve Bank of India Bulletin.

¹ Include all public sector banks, major private sector and foreign banks, and FIs which are actively involved in project financing namely, Industrial Financial Corporation of India (IFCI), Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), Power Finance Corporation (PFC), Rural Electrification Corporation of India (REC) and Export-Import Bank of India (EXIM).

² ECBs include rupee denominated bonds (RDBs).

³ Rangarajan C., (1970), Forecasting capex in the Corporate Sector, Economic and Political Weekly, December 13, 1970.