The moves to revive the ailing Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd (IDPL) with a Rs 441-crore package got further momentum with the Group of Ministers (GoM) set up by the Cabinet has started the process of ratifying the scheme.

The five-member Cabinet committee headed by Defence Minister A K Antony held its first meeting here recently and went through the proposal to pull the public sector giant maker out of the red, sources in the Chemicals Ministry said.

``This was the first meeting and the committee took the preliminary notes on the sick company and went into the details of the package. The panel will meet again soon,'' sources said.

The Chemicals Ministry had prepared the revival package and submitted to the Cabinet which referred it to the GoM sometime back. With the intention of expediting the revival programmes of the ailing PSUs, the Centre had also appointed former Chemicals Secretary Satwant Reddy as advisor after her retirement.

The IDPL was declared sick in 1992 by the Board of Industrial Finance and Reconstruction. The package involves the revival of all the five units of the IDPL and part selling of its vast premises at Gurgaon is also being considered to fund the recovery process. Besides, a bridge loan is also planned to help the public sector giant come out of the red, sources said.

The package, submitted by the Board of Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises (BRPSE) to the Government, was already vetted by an independent agency, ICRA, before being forwarded to the Cabinet. As per the package, the dues and liabilities, including interest, the company owed to the Government would be completely waived. This is worked out to be about Rs 2,600 crore.

The consortium of banks and financial institutions extended a Rs 101 crore loan to the IDPL and the accumulated dues, including interest, had gone up to Rs 800 crore. However, the chairman and managing director of the State Bank of India, who headed the consortium, agreed for a one-time settlement (OTS) scheme, by levying five per cent of simple interest. Thus, the total sum payable to the consortium would come to about Rs 180 crore. The amount infused by the Government to revive the PSU would be repaid by the IDPL over a specific time period.