Russian diamond miner PJSC Alrosa said March 12 that it made an early loan repayment of US$450 million, slashing its debt by over 27% to US$1.17 billion.
The company repaid US$250 million to Rosbank and US$200 million to Raiffeisenbank for loans raised in December 2017.
"The resulting savings on interest payments would amount to US$9 million, positively impacting Alrosa's financial performance in 2018," said CFO and deputy CEO Alexey Philippovskiy.
The company said it used the proceeds from the auction of its gas assets for the repayments. Russian gas producer Novatek won an auction for Alrosa's Beregovoye and Ust-Yamsoveisky gas fields in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous region in central Russia with a bid of 30.3 billion Russian rubles in February.
As of March 9, US$1 was equivalent to 56.60 Russian rubles.
