The corporation has already pre-paid 41 million dollars of loans so far during the current financial year and its application for clearing another 10 million dollars loan is pending with the Finance Ministry for clearance, corporation sources said here today.

When contacted, ONGC's director (Finance) I N Chatterjee told the agency that the corporation was seeking pre-payment of some of the costlier foreign loans as "we have sufficient cash surpluses," but declined to divulge the details.

Stating that ONGC had reduced its foreign loans from over 3.7 billion dollars in 1994-95 to just 1.7billion dollars at the beginning of the current fiscal, Chatterjee said "pre-payment programme is aimed at taking the leverage for our future fund requirements for projects like 1.5 billion dollar revamp of Bombay High oil fields." As per the Government stipulations, a corporate entity is allowed to pre-pay only up to 10 per cent of its loan account and ONGC is seeking special permission from the Finance Ministry to bring down its debt-equity ratio to ensure that its future investment needs are met at favourable interest rates from the global market, the sources said.

Over the next eight years, the corporation is contemplating an investment of about Rs 50,000 crore and it might require the foreign currency loans and suppliers credit for various projects.

The corporation, which posted an outgo of Rs 1,420 crore towards interest payments and exchange fluctuations in 1998-99 against Rs 1,092 crore in the previous year, has brought down its debt equity ratio from .9:1 to .33:1 which would further come down to.28:1 in the current fiscal, the sources said.

Chatterjee, who is working on an elaborate programme to tone up ONGC's financial resources including through an effective expenditure management programme, said that a lower debt-equity ratio would enable the corporation to demand a lower interest rate for its investment requirements.