"The company is planning for a foreign currency loan, of about $73 million by December end," Moser Baer India general manager (business development) Ratul Puri said.

Half of the foreign currency loan would be in euro and the remaining would be dollar denominated, he added.

Mr Puri also said the company may go for private placement of debt to mop up another $37 million (about Rs 170 crore) by the end of this year.

The upcoming debt issues form part of the company's $150 million expansion plan for the next financial year, of which $10 million would be brought in by way of equity, $30 million through internal accruals and balance in debt.

He said that the company would receive the $10 million for equity from JF Electra whose stake in the company would subsequently go up to 18 per cent.

MBIL's current equity structure has upto 26 per cent stake with the promoters (Deepak Puri and family), about 18 per cent each with International Finance Corporation (IFC), Warburg Pincus and JF Electra.

The remaining 11 per cent stake is held by retail investors and 12 per cent by various institutional investors including UTI, HDFC, SBI, Prudential-ICICI and Birla Mutual Fund.

The company has obtained line of credit from SBI, IDBI, Exim Bank and IFC.Elaborating on the company's expansion plans, Mr Puri said that the company would use the proceeds for expansion of capacity of the data storage products including recordable CDs and DVDs, pre-recordable CD and DVDs.

"The company would also set up a line of manufacturing for products such as rewritable CDs and DVDs over the next few months, as part of its plans to increase product range," he added.

MBIL, which has a total capacity of 150 million units of data storage products for the year ending March 2000, would enhance its capacity to 380 million units this year, at a total investment of $70 million for its second phase of expansion.

(PTI)