GAIL's separate gas trading co by 2008
New Delhi: GAIL (India) Ltd has begun its journey towards separating gas trading business from its core business, gas transmission. The process is expected to be completed, and a separate company for gas trading created, by 2008, when the Rs 20,000-crore national gas pipeline grid will be set up.

"For GAIL to become a national gas transmission company and develop confidence of producers and users, we plan to separate the trading business by creating a Chinese wall between transmission and marketing functions," the GAIL (India) chairman and managing director, Proshanto Banerjee, told newspersons here on Monday.

This year, the accounts for the gas trading business were separated from that of other businesses. The next stage will be the creation of a strategic business unit and finally a separate corporate entity that will be listed on major bourses. The new entity will undertake transactions involving gas purchase from producers and importers (LNG) and sale to consumers. Meanwhile, GAIL (India) will retain all other businesses such as LPG production (15 per cent of the country's demand), petrochemicals besides the core business of gas transportation.

Elaborating on the proposed gas grid, the GAIL executive director (Business Development), Rajeev Khanna, said the only Government approval, Right of Use (RoU) for the 7,900-km National Gas Grid, would be completed by June 2004. ``We are talking to all producers (of gas) and importers of natural gas/LNG which include Shell, British Gas, Reliance and Cairn Energy for transporting their gas/LNG through our network. We have reached some degree of analogy with Shell for transporting LNG it would import at Hazira to markets in Maharashtra through the Dahej-Uran pipeline,'' Banerjee said.

On the expansion plans in the CNG business, he said, "The company proposes to take Shell, Botas of Turkey and IFCO of Iran as strategic partners in executing city gas projects in Agra, Faridabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Pune, Bareilly, Vijayawada, Secunderabad and Hyderabad." CNG service is expected to commence in Kanpur, Lucknow, Agra and Bareilly in mid-2004.

On the exploration front, GAIL plans to double its investment in business to Rs 254 crore in 2004-05. GAIL currently holds interest in 10 exploration blocks. It is in talks with Royal Dutch/Shell to acquire a 15 per cent stake in an offshore medium-sized gas field in Egypt.

In the gas distribution business, GAIL is planning to acquire equity stakes in two city gas distribution projects in Egypt. "Shell has offered us 19 per cent equity in Fayum gas company and 10 per cent equity in Shell CNG company (both in Egypt). Financial, legal and technical due diligence study for both have been completed and valuation and other terms and conditions for investment are under preparation," he said. GAIL is also evaluating the feasibility of participation in another gas distribution company in Egypt, Natgas, Banerjee said.
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Dr Reddy's gets FDA nod for new drug application
Hyderabad: DR Reddy's Laboratories Ltd, the Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical major listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has received the final approval of the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for AmVaz (Amlodipine Maleate).

With this, the company has become the first Indian pharmaceutical company to receive FDA approval for a new drug application (NDA) under Section 505(b)(2) of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. Preparations were on to launch Amlodipine Maleate in Europe upon expiration of the Supplementary Protection Certificate in March 2004.

The company said its US product pipeline currently comprises 27 abbreviated NDAs (ANDAs), 2 NDAs (including Amlodipine Maleate) and 44 drug master files (DMFs). Of these ANDAs, 20 were submitted under Paragraph IV. During the current fiscal, the company expects to file 15-18 ANDAs, 15 DMFs and additional NDAs.
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Reliance raises polymer prices
Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd has raised polymer prices. Polyethylene prices have gone up by 6.6 per cent to Rs 44 per kg (Rs 41.50) while polypropylene and polyvinyl chloride prices are up 4.5 per cent and 4.9 per cent each to Rs 46.85 per kg (Rs 44.85) and Rs 42.50 per kg (Rs 40.50) respectively. Among fibre intermediates, monoethylene glycol prices have been increased to Rs 41.05 per kg (Rs 40.60), while purified terephthalic acid prices were slashed to Rs 33.90 per kg (Rs 34.50). Among polyester products, polyethylene terephthalate prices have been cut by 5.5 per cent to Rs 52 per kg (Rs 55), while polyester staple fibre prices are up to Rs 62.75 per kg (Rs 60.75). Prices of partially-oriented yarn and linear alkyl benzene remain unchanged at Rs 74 per kg and Rs 54.40 per kg.
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Deccan Gold Mines announces Rs 5-cr rights issue
New Delhi: Deccan Gold Mines Ltd, the only listed gold exploration company in the country, on Monday announced a rights issue to aggregate nearly Rs 5 crore to expand exploration activity.

"We would offer 4.9 crore equity shares of Re 1 each for cash at par to the existing shareholders in a ratio of 20 shares for every share held. The shareholders have the option of renouncing the rights. The funds would be used to undertake exploration in the Dharwar-Shimoga block in Karnataka," the company executive director, Sandeep Lakhwara, told newspersons here.

Post rights, the subscribed capital of the company would expand to Rs 5.145 crore. The company, at present, has issued and subscribed share capital to the tune of Rs 2.45 crore comprising shares of Rs 10 each, which would be split into 10 shares of face value of Re 1 each.

He said that the block, comprising as many as 11 gold bearing prospects, had the potential of becoming an open pittable gold mine. Deccan Gold has already started exploration to ascertain the exact length, width and depth of zone and gold grade. Deccan Gold is majority owned by Australian Indian Resources, a company floated in Australia, which has invested Rs 10 crore till now in the country.
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Saregama to restrict film budget
Kolkata: Saregama, the entertainment company in the RPG group, has decided to restrict its budget in film production to about Rs 5 crore, making a re-entry into the segment with Hindi and Bengali films.

The Group vice-chairman, Sanjiv Goenka, told presspersons that the company, which has hived off its TV software and filmmaking into a separate company, is also expecting to gain from the songs of these films which would be marketed by Saregama.

Pointing out that emphasis would be placed on marketing of these films, especially the Bengali ones that the film subsidiary would produce, he said that the first Hindi film under this banner is expected to roll out by next year. This would be a Rs 4-5-crore budget film `shadow directed' by Mahesh Bhatt and with a new star cast.

Goenka, who was releasing a music album of a Bengali film, said that he also hoped to give a help to revitalise the Bengali film industry which was once a pioneer industry. The film ' Aalo ' has nine Tagore songs and is directed by Tarun Mazumdar.

Goenka said that while new and old Hindi film songs constitute 70 per cent of the recorded Hindi music market, Bengali film songs had a very small share. "There is scope for doubling the market share," he said.
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Tata Steel plans big in mineral business
New Delhi: Tata Steel has said the company will focus on the minerals business in a major way and is prospecting for titanium dioxide, a key ingredient for paints and high-grade paper, along the Tamil Nadu coast.

"The sand along the eastern coast in the states of Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh is rich in titanium dioxide. We have narrowed down on Tamil Nadu to begin with and we would start mining in the near future," a senior Tata Steel official said here.

As the country grew, the need for the mineral, used as a whitening agent, would also grow. At present, most of the demand was met by imports but there were adequate resources already available within the country to cater to the domestic demand, he said.

Tata Steel was also focused on chromium, and as part of its strategy to enhance its business internationally, the company was setting up a Ferro-chrome unit at Richard's Bay in South Africa. "We are awaiting environmental clearance for the Rs 250 crore unit that will produce 1,25,000 tonnes of Ferro-chrome annually," he said.

Production of Ferro-chrome was a power intensive industry and environmental clearance was the most critical aspect, he added.

On Tata Steel's expansion plans, he said that the company was planning to add an additional capacity of two million tonnes to its Jamshedpur facility over and above a one million tonne brown-field expansion that was already underway.

"We are already in the process of adding 1 m.t. additional capacity. That Rs 2,000 crore expansion would be completed by 2005 and would come up partly due to de-bottlenecking and partly due to capacity augmentation. Simultaneously, we are working on a plan to add another 2 m.t. capacity. The detailed plan is likely to be worked out by the end of the current financial year and the capacity would go on stream by 2008," he said.
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Indraprastha Gas in talks with OIDB for debt swap
Chennai: Indraprastha Gas Ltd (IGL) is in talks with its lender, Oil Industry Development Board (OIDB), for prepaying its high-cost loans with cheaper funds borrowed either from the market or from the board itself.Currently, it is paying nine per cent interest for the Rs 68-odd crore it borrowed from OIDB.

The company, which pipes natural gas into Delhi for automobiles, commercial enterprises and households, expects to prepay the loan with funds that are at least two percentage points cheaper. IGL expects to invest Rs 183 crore this year - Rs 147 crore in building more CNG filling stations in the Capital, and Rs 36 crore in extending the network of pipes that reach natural gas to kitchens.

All but some Rs 20 crore of the budgeted investments are likely to be funded from moneys generated by the company's operations. "Our sales gets us Rs 1.2 crore each day," A.K. De, managing director, told newspersons. The company does not expect to go to the market for more loans, so interest costs may not climb up much this year. But an interest-lowering debt-swap is needed now since the company's shares are likely to be bought by the public. For the first time since the company was set up in 1998, the public will have an opportunity to own IGL shares, as the three institutional investors who co-promoted the company are selling a part of their holdings.

IGL, a joint venture of GAIL (India) Ltd, Bharat Petroleum and the Government of Delhi, who hold 50 per cent of the company's Rs 140-crore equity. The other half of the equity is held by IL&FS, IDFC and UTI. The first two own 20 per cent each; UTI has 10 per cent. These institutional investors now want to sell half of their respective holdings. And that is how four crore shares of IGL are being offered to the public, through the book building route.

Speaking of the earnings potential the company has, De said that a large number of automobiles in the National Capital Territory (Delhi) is yet to convert to CNG, which is 42 per cent cheaper than petrol, 18 per cent than diesel and only half as costly as LPG. Besides, only about 10,000 households today get gas through pipelines.

IGL has plans to expand its operations to areas such as Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida and Faridabad. De said that since no other company could come in and set up a competing infrastructure for piping gas, IGL was a virtual monopoly.
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Galaxy net at Rs 87.4 lakh
Mumbai: Galaxy Entertainment Corporation Ltd has reported a net profit of Rs 87.41 lakh during the second quarter of this fiscal against a loss of Rs 4.34 lakh in the year-ago period. Income from operations moved up to Rs 9.63 crore from Rs 1.92 crore last year. The total turnover (Rs 10.03 crore) has shown a 373 per cent jump from the unaudited turnover (Rs 2.12 crore) of the second quarter of last fiscal.
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Hyundai October sales up 27.4 pc
New Delhi: Hyundai Motor India has registered 27.4 per cent growth in October 2003 sales, which touched 13,297 units. Domestic sales grew by 22.5 per cent over October 2002 sales of 9,250 units to touch 11,334 units in the month, while exports grew by 65.4 per cent over October 2002 sales of 1,187 units to 1,963 units.

Sales of the Santro grew 28.8 per cent to 10,618 units, while that of Accent grew 24.6 per cent to 2,548 units. Sonata sales dipped by 33 units to 117 units, while sales of the SUV, Terracan, stood at 14 units with an order backlog of about 100 units.

According to a company release, the monthly average domestic sales of the Santro has zoomed to around 9,000 units a month after the launch of the Santro Xing in May 2003, about 32 per cent more than its 2002 monthly average sales. Meanwhile, the Accent CRDi and Viva launched in 2002-end have pushed up the monthly average domestic sales of the Accent by 21 per cent to 2,022 units.
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Maruti Oct sales zoom 35.2 pc
New Delhi: Maruti Udyog Ltd (MUL) on Monday said its passenger car sales in October this year grew by 35.2 per cent at 38,715 vehicles, including exports of 5,260 units, against 28,630 units in October 2002, powered by a robust performance of its compact cars. Aiding the boost in car sales during the month was also the end of a strike at one of Maruti's vendors. The strike at DCM Engineering, which supplies the bulk of an important engine part, had hampered Maruti's production in the past few months, affecting sales.

Maruti said sales of its compact cars, the Zen, the Alto and the WagonR, surged by 41 per cent during the month while the offtake of the entry-level Maruti 800 grew by 7.3 per cent. Sedan sales increased by 45 per cent. The Zen, the Alto and the WagonR together sold 14,810 units in October this year. The sales of the Maruti 800 was 12,195 units, while the midsize cars, the Baleno and the Esteem suffered a drop of six per cent with sales of 1,055 units.

Total passenger car sales in the month grew by 25.2 per cent to 33,330 units, Maruti said in a statement here. The Omni and the Versa vans recorded a sales growth of 45 per cent during October 2003 at 5,270 units, but sales of the utility vehicles, the Gypsy and the Vitara, dropped by 57.5 per cent to 125 units from 294 units in the same month last year. Total domestic sales of Maruti in October stood at 33,455 units, up by 24.2 per cent. Exports in the month soared 208 per cent to 5,260 units from 1,704 units a year ago. During the April-October period, Maruti's total sales surged by 31.6 per cent to 2,51,183 units over 1,90,940 units in the corresponding period a year ago.
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Grasim, Guj Ambuja cement output, despatches up
Mumbai: Grasim Industries Ltd and Gujarat Ambuja Cements Ltd have reported higher production and despatches of cement during October 2003. Grasim reported a 12.59 per cent increase in cement production at 10.53 lakh tonnes (l.t.) during October 2003 and despatches rose by 10.78 per cent to 10.29 l.t.

Gujarat Ambuja Cements Ltd (GACL) reported an eight per cent increase in production and despatches at 8.38 l.t and 8 l.t respectively. The Ambuja Group reported an eight per cent increase in production at 10.62 l.t and a 10 per cent increase in despatches at 10.15 l.t.

Cement production for the April-October 2003 period for Grasim moved up by 5.84 per cent at 71.99 l.t against 68.02 l.t during the year-ago period. Despatches during this period rose by 5.84 per cent to 71.97 l.t (68 l.t).
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Yamaha sales up 23 pc in October
New Delhi: Yamaha Motor India on Monday said its sales in October went up 23 per cent year on year on the back of the Crux and Libero models. The company sold 40,296 units in October as compared to 32,792 units in the same month last year, Yamaha said in a statement here. On a sequential basis, sales in October were up by 16 per cent over September this year.
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