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Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has outlined ambitious plans for a renewable energy expansion and defended the financial health of his conglomerate, even as attacks by short sellers wiped millions from his listed company’s market value. billion dollars.
Speaking via video link at Adani Enterprises’ annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, the billionaire said his conglomerate is building a 20GW hybrid renewable energy project in Kavda, in India’s Gujarat state.
He added that the group was expanding the international programming and coverage of TV channel NDTV and vowed that his logistics company would become “the most profitable port company in the world” by 2030.
“We could have chosen to be content with average growth numbers, or we could have woken up every day believing that we were about to become one of the most influential conglomerates our country has ever built,” Adani said. “Forty-four thousand Adani People made the latter choice,” he said, referring to the group’s headcount.
The annual meeting is the first for Adani Enterprises, the flagship unit of the Adani Group, since Hindenburg Research released accusations in January that Adani was involved in stock price manipulation and accounting fraud.
Adani described the report, which saw the total market value of its listed companies drop by $150 billion at its worst, as a “deliberate malicious attempt to damage our reputation”. Since then, the share prices of listed companies under the group have partially rebounded.
Adani said the group’s balance sheet was “healthier than ever”. CreditSights, the credit research firm owned by Fitch, last year described Adani Group as “significantly overleveraged”.
Since the short sale report, Adani has reassured investors and bondholders by slowing down some investment plans, repaying equity-backed debt and selling stakes to outside backers including Florida-based investment firm GQG Partners.
Adani cited nationalist sentiment in his speech, saying the company defined “resilience”, including “resilience that drives our belief in the country we call ours”. Matt Rubumi (Fatherland)”. He also said that Hindenburg launched the January 25 attack “on the eve of Republic Day this year”.
Adani echoes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic agenda, predicting that India will become the world’s second-largest economy by 2050, with per capita income rising more than 700 percent to about $16,000.
“I expect that within the next decade, India’s GDP will start to increase by $1 trillion every 18 months,” said the tycoon, who predicted that India’s economy would be worth $25 trillion to $300,000 by 2050. One hundred million U.S. dollars.
Priyanka Kishore, economic director of IMA Asia, a forum for regional business leaders, said that “Adani’s forecast is not far-fetched considering that the average inflation rate is about 4% and the real growth rate is about 5.5%.
Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2050, the real GDP of the Indian economy will reach $22.2 trillion. Capital Economics, a London-based consultancy, predicts that India will become the world’s third-largest economy by 2050.
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