A Study on Adjusting Interest Rates for Project Financing in Consideration of the Value of Debt Guarantee

채무보증 가치를 고려한 프로젝트 파이낸싱 이자율 조정에 관한 연구

The volume of project financing (PF) is rapidly increasing in Korea, and it has structural problems to overcome. Usually, PF depends on cash flow of a project for funding. However, in Korea, project financing includes 'debt guarantee' of a construction company to ensure against a bankruptcy risk of a special purpose company (SPC). Accordingly, when the SPC becomes default due to poor profits, the construction company is burdened with the debt obligation. In other words, while a construction company bears most of the financial responsibilities, a financial institution bears relatively less risk in granting loans. Meanwhile, PF tends to incur high interest rates for its hypothetically high risks. Considering these, this research explores how to adjust interest rates for PF loans, taking into account the value of debt guarantee using real options. The analysis result suggests that, including the value of debt guarantee, the project is worth 105.61 billion KRW. That is, the project value increases as much as the reduced risk by including debt guarantee. Lower risk leads to lower interest rates, which in turn, cuts back financing cost and increases the project value. To calculate the project value including the value of debt guarantee, interest rates were adjusted, and at 7.9%, present value of the project was estimated to be 105.67 billion KRW, proximate to 105.61 billion KRW.