"The amount will be raised in tranches through private placements and partly through a public issue of bonds, for which a prospectus will be submitted to Sebi soon," chairman and managing director P V Narasimham said.Narasimham said the corporation would also mobilise funds through fixed deposits from the public. On the public issue, he said the corporation would submit an "umbrella prospectus" to Sebi.

Under an umbrella prospectus, a financial institution or a corporate raises money in different tranches and does not have to approach Sebi every time it seeks to tap the primary market.

Its peers, including IDBI and ICICI, have already received permission from the capital market regulator for their umbrella prospectuses. The funds being raised by the corporation will be loaned to the infrastructuresector, especially power and telecom, he said. Narasimham said the institution had shown a 30 per cent growth in disbursals in the first four months of the 1998-99 financial year.

"This is in line with the IFCI's projections of a 30 per cent growth for the entire year," he said. Bulk of the disbursals went to fund projects in the power and telecom sectors, he said, adding that investors were keen on investing in these sectors because of high returns.

The situation was similar to the eighties, when corporates were investing in the cement and steel sectors which were booming then, he said. Today, these investors have moved away to other industrial sectors like power and telecom because of higher returns they offered, Narasimham said.

Asked about plans to diversify its operations, he said the corporation proposed to enter into advisory services. He said as much as 90 to 95 per cent of its lending profile was constituted by project finance. However, this will be reduced over a period of time.

Narasimhamsaid IFCI would not get into personal banking activities like housing, car and other consumer finance schemes. He admitted that the level of non-performing assets in the corporation was over 8 per cent.

"We would like to bring it down to 4 to 5 per cent in next two years. This would be a reasonable level," he said. Asked why the corporation's lending was mostly in the north, he said that 30 per cent of its total lending went to the northern region. ``We propose to increase lending in other regions as well,'' he explained. He said that lendings in general were always higher in the region where a corporation was headquartered. Since IFCI was based in the north, lendings were higher there. This was true of other institutions as well, he added.