Russian diamond mining giant Alrosa has prepaid $450 million of bank loans, thereby reducing its debt by more than 27% to $1.17 billion.
According to a press release, Alrosa made early repayment of a $250 million loan from Rosbank and a $200 million portion of the existing Raiffeisenbank loan, both raised in December 2017. Both loans were paid with the cash proceeds received from Alrosa’s auction sale of gas assets in February 2018.
Alexey Philippovskiy, Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer of the company, said: “As part of the efforts to improve liquidity management, ALROSA repaid short-term bank loans for a total of USD 450 million ahead of schedule. The resulting savings on interest payments would amount to USD 9 million, positively impacting ALROSA’s financial performance in 2018”.
