Adani says Carmichael mine funds on track

ADANI is hosing down claims its Carmichael megamine coal project is struggling, with reports out of India saying it can’t find banks to fund it.

The claims suggest the country’s banks won’t finance the central Queensland project because Adani’s debt is too high and their exposure to the company has reached their limits. There were also concerns by banks about reputational damage.

However, the company restructured its debt recently and said yesterday it was in talks in the past month with lenders. There has also been speculation about a British company wanting to buy a stake in the project.

“We are gaining momentum all the time,’’ an Adani spokesman said last night.

“We have financial arrangements with the parent company and less than $2 billion to gather.’’

He said if its critics were so certain the project was not financially viable, why were they spending so much time and money trying to attack it?

He said debt issues were not as bad as critics made out.

However, Adani also faces a big problem at its Mundra Thermal Power Project in Gujarat state, which will take coal from the Carmichael mine.

The massive power station has effectively become unviable because of higher operating costs, which it cannot pass on to consumers and Adani is now trying to hand it off to the provincial government.