New Delhi: Billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani has stepped up efforts to make Reliance Industries completely debt free. Reliance Industries has a net debt of Rs 1.61 lakh crore. Ambani wants to make the company completely debt free by adding more strategic investors. Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, had set a target of completely debt-freeing by August 2021 in August last year. He has recently tied up with Facebook for $ 5.7 billion, or Rs 43,547 crore.
Facebook will acquire 9.9 percent stake in Reliance Jio. Apart from this, Reliance Industries has announced a rights issue of Rs 53,125 crore. Also, the company is going to sell a stake in its oil and petrochemicals business to Saudi Aramco. In such a situation, Reliance Industries can achieve the target by December this year. “The target of zero debt will be achieved in the calendar year 2020,” said Reliance Industries’ joint chief financial officer Srikanth Venkatachari in an investor and media call following the announcement of the fourth quarter results of the last financial year.
Ambani has sold 9.99 percent stake in digital platform Jio to Facebook after the August announcement. He has announced the splitting of Reliance’s oil and petrochemicals business into separate units, leading to the proposed sale of the stake to Saudi Aramco. With this, Ambani has said that any shortfall in the rights issue will be compensated.
