HPL and UTI lock horns on injunction
Kolkata: The UTI has brought an injunction on Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd (HPL) restraining the company from selling its movable assets except in the course of normal business. HPL says that it will seek legal redress on UTI's unilateral course of action. According to a HPL press release an amount of Rs 3 crore was paid to UTI on February 18 this year in line with the CDR (corporate debt restructuring) norms, and that it was currently pursuing with all concerned, including UTI, their individual sanction of the CDR package. HPL says that the payment of Rs.3 crore made to UTI clears its dues till June 2002.
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ONGC and subsidiaries cross $10 billion mark in 2003-04
New Delhi: Oil exploration giant Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) says that it has made six new discoveries during 2003-04. The six discoveries are located at East Lakhibari (oil) in Assam, Sonamura (gas) in Tripura, Degam (oil) in Gujarat, Sitarampuram (gas) in Andhra Pradesh, NMT-2 (gas) in Western Offshore and G-4 in Bay of Bengal. According to a company press release. 2003-04 has seen the gross turnover of the company and its subsidiaries cross the $10 billion mark. According to the company the onshore finds are being brought into production, and development plans were being prepared for the offshore ones. Offshore discoveries in D-1 and Vasai East fields in Western Offshore and G-1 and GS-15 finds in Eastern Offshore are under development, with deliveries likely to start in 2005-06, it said. Nineteen marginal oil and gas fields in Western offshore have been offered for service contracts.

The fields are likely to be awarded by September 2004 and development work is scheduled to begin by next year. The company says that the redevelopment of ONGC's flagship Mumbai High field in the Arabian Sea has already augmented production by 50,000 barrels per day (2.5 million tonnes per year). The company's gross turnover stood at Rs 33,350 crore in 2003-04 as against Rs 35,387 crore in the previous year, after adjusting Rs 2,063 crore paid to oil retailing companies for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and Kerosene subsidy as directed by the Government, it said.

The company declared an interim dividend of Rs 14 per share amounting to Rs 1,996 crore for the year. The year also saw ONGC's wholly owned subsidiary, ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL), raise its turnover 12 times to Rs 3,175 crore. The subsidiary acquired 49 per cent stake in two exploration blocks in Libya, and 60 per cent interest in one exploration block in Syria. ONGC's downstream subsidiary, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL), processed 10.05 million tonnes of crude, 104 per cent of the rated capacity of 9.69 million tonnes. It registered a gross turnover of Rs 12,488 crore, up 46 per cent over last year.
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MMTC to double turnover from Rs.10,000 crore by 2006-07
New Delhi: At a press conference announcing the performance highlights of the company in the fiscal year 2003-04 as also its strategies for the current year, MMTC says that the company has plans to leverage its core competency in the existing lines of business and also to diversify into new areas, including building infrastructure for trading activities. The company said that it has registered the highest-ever sales turnover of Rs 10,000 crore in fiscal 2003-04, and that the MMTC group, including its fully-owned subsidiary of Singapore, is all set to double this volume of business by the end of the tenth Plan period (2006-07).

The company says that in the area of strategic initiatives, it plans to put in place systems for procuring food grains and other agro commodities directly from the mandis instead of purchasing the same from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) as it had done in recent period. In consolidating core competencies, the company proposes to establish a crushing and screening plant at Banihatti to provide value addition to iron ore, besides exploring new outlets for minerals in Haldia, Mumbai and Redi. It also proposes to expand its duty-free shop network for export of jewellery.
According to the company, the company's exclusive jetty for iron ore at Ennore in Chennai port would start functioning from May 2004. Excluding that of its Singapore subsidiary, MMTC's own turnover of Rs 9,200 crore in 2003-04 would be highest ever. The company's net worth set to reach record high of Rs 677 crore at the end of 2003-04.
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Vizag Steel turnover up 22 per cent at Rs 6,000 crore
Visakhapatnam: The sales turnover of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant crossed the Rs 6,000-crore mark during 2003-2004, registering a rise of 22 per cent. The plant had produced 4.05 million tonnes of hot metal, 3.51 million tonnes of liquid steel and 3.17 million tonnes of saleable steel during the year, surpassing the rated capacities for the third consecutive year. The plant also produced 8 lakh tonnes of special steel during the year. The company's turnover amounted to Rs 6,174 crore, a rise of 22 per cent over the previous year, and the cash profit (provisional) was Rs. 1,972 crore with the net profit at Rs 1,521 crore.

The company wiped out all debts by November, 2003, and the interest burden could be reduced to Rs 50 crore. The plant's capacity utilisation was in the range of 110 per cent to 120 across various production units and it is now one of the cheapest producers of steel in the country. The labour productivity, at 262 tonnes per man-year, was the highest among Indian integrated steel plants. The company could earn Rs 5,406 crore through domestic sales and Rs 768 crore through exports against Rs 4,458 crore and Rs 600 crore respectively during 2002-2003.
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Cement sales for ACC up 11 per cent
Mumbai: Associated Cement Companies Ltd (ACC) has ended the last fiscal (April-March 2003-04) despatching a total volume of 15.36 mt of cement, compared with 13.88 mt in the preceding year, a growth of 10.7 per cent. Output also included that of the Idcol Cement Ltd in Orissa, which was acquired by ACC from Industrial Development Corporation of Orissa Ltd at cost of Rs 176 crore.
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Intel chips boost Tally performance 50 per cent
New Delhi: Accounting software company, Tally, has optimised its products for Intel Pentium 4 processors and claims that performance of its software has gone up by 50 per cent. The company also hopes that through such initiatives it will be able to facilitate greater collaboration between Intel and leading software developers across the region.
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Manupatra.com launches CD-ROMs for legal database
New Delhi: As part of its efforts to make the Web site more popular, Manupatra Information Solutions Ltd, the company that runs the Web site, Manupatra.com, has recently launched a CD-ROM version of the legal database and is trying to push the product in smaller towns through the direct selling route.

The company, which has about 800 subscribers and nearly 5,000 users (65 per cent of whom are lawyers), hopes that the CD version will help it penetrate the market better and help its subscription rise to 34,000-40,000 in the next five years. The company says that though there are a couple of CD products available in the market for Supreme Court judgements, individual High Court CDs across all subjects of law would be the first of its kind in the country.
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