Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemical Ltd on Wednesday prepaid Rs 2,380 crore (Rs 23.80 billion) of rupee loans and said it plans to prepay the remaining Rs 257 crore (Rs 2.57 billion) of debt by January 19.

"MRPL has pre-paid the entire Facilities 'A' and 'B' of rupee term lenders under the debt restructuring package (approved when the company was taken over by state exploration firm Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in March 2003) aggregating to Rs 2380 crore," a company press release said in New Delhi.

The company, which had an option under DRP to prepay the loan without any prepayment premium, will save Rs 82 crore (Rs 820 million) per annum in interest cost through the prepayments.

ONGC had granted long term loan of upto Rs 2,600 crore (Rs 26 billion) to it subsidiary MRPL at bank rate (about 6 per cent), which was used to pre-pay the costlier bank loans (with average interest rate of 9.15 per cent per annum).

MRPL has given notice to Facility 'C' lenders to prepay the existing outstandings amounting to Rs 257 crore on January 19.

"The operating performance of MRPL ha been fast improving after ONGC's entry into MRPL in March 2003," it said.