Project Description
Raffles Education Corporation Limited (“REC”, “Raffles” or the “Company”), headquartered in Singapore, is the largest private education group in Asia-Pacific. Since establishing its first college in Singapore in 1990, the group has grown to operate 37 colleges in 34 cities across 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. There are more than 28,700 students enrolled in Raffles’ tertiary programs and the Company employs over 3,000 academic and administrative staff. Raffles also owns the Oriental University City (”OUC”), a self-contained campus in Langfang, China. Within this campus, OUC provides education services to 9 colleges with a total student population of over 27,000.
The proposed IFC financing is a corporate finance facility to REC to support its continued expansion over the next four years. The expansion includes entry into new markets, scaling up Raffles’ operations in select existing markets and on-going maintenance capex. The IFC financing is expected to be used to fund (i) the construction of a greenfield university in Greater Noida, India; (ii) the construction of a greenfield university in Iskandar, Malaysia; (iii) the establishment of vocational training schools in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand; and (iv) the repayment of short-term debt.