Queensland vetoes loan support to Adani project

The Adani group had applied for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) loan worth 900 million dollars for building the 388-km rail line to connect the major coal mine to the sea port.

The 16.5 billion dollar Carmichael coal mine project is one of the world's largest.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, after being sworn in, wrote to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to veto an almost $1 billion concessional loan for the Adani mine, Brisbane Times reported. She also tweeted a photo of her letter, fulfilling a major poll promise she had made during the election campaign to put a stop to the NAIF loan on her first day.

"As I committed during the election campaign, I have today written to the Prime Minister exercising Queensland's veto over any NAIF funding for the Adani rail line," she said in a tweet. Earlier last month after reports of conflict of interest emerged, Palaszczuk said her government will exercise its 'veto' to not support the NAIF loan to remove doubt about any perception of conflict.

Meanwhile, an Adani Australia spokesperson said in a statement that the company will now fully consider and adjust to the constraints the veto of NAIF funding brings.

"We would not be investing our time, money and energy in this manner if our projects were not viable and if we were not serious about delivering our projects which will ultimately generate more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs across all of our projects," the statement said.

Adani Australia currently employs over 800 people and has invested over 3.3 billion dollar in Queensland, which is one of the biggest investments by an Indian company in Australia, it said.

The projects are viewed in a positive light by the Queensland government and considered as critical infrastructure investments, it said, adding that the projects continue to retain the support of the Queensland government.