Foreign currency loan inflows during January-July period this year are down to a trickle at $1.74 billion, less than half of the $3.57 billion contracted during the comparable period last calendar.

Out of the $1.74 billion, State Bank of India bilaterals -- one-on-one loan transactions -- accounted for $637 million, with the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) following at $500 million and the shipping sector with $212 million.Conventional syndicated loans accounted for a mere $393 million of overseas loan floatations.

One of the biggest accessers of foreign currency loans in the first half of last calendar -- financial instituitions -- have got nothing against their names. Last time around, financial institutions had raised $350 million andalong with IOC at $1.52 billion had raised a cummulative amount of $1.87 billion by this period.

In all, during the whole of the last calendar, corporates and state-run entities had raised $6.12 billion in foreign currency loans. And most of these inflows had materialised by September-October 1997 when the east-Asian flu made the region let out a big sneeze, blowing away with it the foreign currency loan plans of corporate India. Later developments have only accentuated the problem.

All this is a far cry from the scenario prevailing in the first half of the last calendar when two major greenfield projects sourced cross-border loans.

These included a $300-million one by Reliance Petroleum arranged by Bankam, ABN Amro Bank, Toronto Dominion and Bankers Trust; and a $283-million loan from the Birla-AT&T stable, lead managed by BankAm and Toronto Dominion.

Notable cross-border loan transactions since September 1997 are a $85-million Tisco facility arranged by BankAm in late December-January 1998, another$75 million at around the same time for Tata-Bell Canada, two IOC loan rollovers -- a $500-million (inclusive of a $100-million greenshoe option) facility by ABN Amro Bank, Dresdner Bank and Krediet Bank in January and another in April by BankAm, a $190-million offering by Essar Shipping arranged by Novascotia, and by the now well-known Power Finance Corporation's $100-million arranged by ANZ Investment Bank.

The last mentioned is by far the only fresh borrowing this fiscal as IOC's $500-million loan rollover by BankAm in April was merely an execution of a contractual obligation entered into six months earlier.

One of the prime loans in the pipeline was a $200-million offering by cellular telephony operator BPL-US West, which has now been truncated substantially. A $50-million ECB from MSEB to be arranged by Societe Generale was dropped some time back. Indo-Gulf Fertilizers has followed suit with regard to a $50-milliom loan facility.

The spotlight is now on a $75-million refinancing for IRFC, a$250-million loan offering by the Maheshwar Hydel project in Maharashtra, as also benchmark setting ones by Reliance Power, Bina Power and L&T-CEA and Dabhol Power Company.