The chiefs of all the financial institutions, it is now learnt, are likely to meet shortly to ``freeze'' the project cost of the company's copper smelter project, which has been delayed severely with the resultant cost increase. It is not yet clear whether there will be any further revision in project cost because of the delay.

The company's rights and public issues of fully convertible debentures closed in April. With the fulfillment of underwriting commitments, both the issues met the requirement of minimum 90 per cent subscription. The company finally allotted 47,71,379 FCDs of Rs 100 each against the public issue and 56,49,276 FCDs against the rights issue.

SWIL chairman Anil Khaitan told The Financial Express after the company's annual general meeting here on Wednesdaythat ICICI, the lead institution, has now got all the reports from its concurrent auditors and the engineers' certificate from Mecon, which went into the project completion details.

``Mecon has commented that the project can start within seven months from the date funds are disbursed by the FIs,'' Khaitan said.

Khaitan said the institutions are now convinced about the progress made in implementation and the viability of the project.

``We have now sought a moratorium on loan repayments for the next two years in view of the delays already suffered and the attendant problems of cash flows. Since this concession is unlikely to affect their yields to maturity, we are hopeful of a decision in our favour,'' he said.

On the current status of the copper project, Khaitan said nearly 90 per cent of the project had been completed. ``In fact, we had export orders for June 1999 delivery for copper cathodes which could not be executed as production could not begin in time. Barring unforeseen circumstances, theproject should go on stream by end of 1999,'' he added.

Out of the installed capacity of 50,000 tonnes, the company has already committed 20,000 tonnes for export to the Metal & Commodity Company Ltd of the UK which is engaged in trading of metal commodities in the international market.

Khaitan said another 20,000 tonnes has been committed for supply to the Indian subsidiary of TDT Copper of Japan which has operations in Haryana. Another 5,000 tonnes is earmarked for captive consumption at the company's Nashik plant leaving only 5,000 tonnes to be marketed by the company, he pointed out.