Bhel Tiruchi has orders worth Rs8,500-cr
Tiruchi: The order book value of the Tiruchi unit of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) is nearing Rs8,500 crore next year, according to the executive director of the unit, S. Sathyanarayanan. He said the order book position of the unit has been growing consistently and is expected to touch record highs in the years to come in view of the large scale capacity additions planned in the country's power sector.

He said that BHEL had entered into a collaborative agreement with Alstom, a private sector company, for manufacture of Once Through Boilers. This would give an additional competitive edge to BHEL in manufacturing high capacity boilers for mega projects of 800 and 1,000 MW capacities.
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MTNL falls behind pvt telecom operators
New Delhi: As the private telecom industry is ramping up capacity and expanding its network, state owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam's major projects are running behind schedule. The projects, whose completion has been delayed, include MTNL's expansion plans in the broadband network, GSM cellular segment, CDMA mobile services, leased line project, switching projects and deployment of convergent billing solutions.

MTNL's plan to offer its fixed line telephone subscribers value added services similar to mobile phones through intelligent networks has been delayed due to supply from the vendor. MTNL has also blamed the vendor for not being able to configure the new intelligent equipment for inter-working with existing equipment. The convergent billing solutions project, which would offer a single bill to customers for all telecom needs such as mobile, broadband and fixed line telephone is also delayed till March 2007. MTNL officials said that the delays were not affecting the subscribers, as the existing capacities were enough and parts of the new projects were in place. The GSM project, which envisaged additional capacity of 8, 00,000 each in Delhi and Mumbai will now be completed by September 2006.

The CDMA project of 8,00,000 new lines is likely to be completed by December 2006. On the broadband front MTNL's 5,10,000 line expansion plan is running behind schedule.
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Gas companies payout at Rs6,000-cr in sharing Q2 burden
New Delhi: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, GAIL (India), and Oil India may have to payout almost Rs6,000 crore for the second quarter this fiscal, as part of burden-sharing arrangement worked out by the Government.

As per the estimates, the under-recoveries of oil marketing companies on domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), kerosene sold under public distribution system, petrol and diesel for the second quarter of 2006-07 are expected to be Rs17,123 crore.

This is despite the price hike on petrol and diesel on June 5 by Rs4 and Rs2 respectively. Out of the estimated under-recoveries of Rs17,123 crore, the upstream oil companies are expected to share the burden of about Rs6,000 crore.

The subsidy sharing follows a Cabinet decision according to which the gas companies will take a subsidy burden of Rs24,000 crore in the full year.
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Sterlite may get balance Balco stake cheap
New Delhi: Sterlite Industries may get to acquire the government's residual 49 per cent stake in Balco for Rs631 crore, a quarter less than the price it had offered to pay a few months back.

That offer of Rs842.52 crore, which came with an interest of around Rs256 crore, was based on SBI Caps' valuation of the stake. Attorney General Milon K Banerji advised the government that this price was too low as international aluminium prices had shot up since 2004, making Balco's business more valuable now.

Sterlite Industries then approached the Delhi High Court for initiating arbitration proceedings against the government in this regard. Sources said according to a clause in the Shareholders Agreement drawn up between Sterlite and the government in 2001, the winner of arbitration proceedings has the right to buy (a call option) the other party's shares for 75 per cent of the valuation at the time of the call option in 2004. Alternatively, the winner can choose to sell (a put option) its shareholding for 125 per cent of the valuation.

The government had divested 51 per cent of its equity in Balco to Sterlite for Rs551.1 crore in 2001. If the arbitration award goes in favour of Sterlite and the company chooses to exercise the call option, it can buy the remaining shares for Rs631 crore.

If Sterlite chooses the put option, the government will have to buy back Sterlite's majority stake at 75 per cent of the SBI Caps' valuation.

However, Balco's fate may still not be decided by an arbitration award, given that the Delhi High Court acceded to the government's request last Monday, and gave it four weeks to negotiate with Sterlite, and reach a settlement. If the negotiations remain deadlocked by the first week of September, arbitration proceedings would begin in court.
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Zensar Tech gets into pharma services
Mumbai: Zensar Technologies, the IT firm of the RPG Enterprises, is venturing into pharma and healthcare solutions sector in partnership with the US-based Impact Inc and is in the process of signing up few major service outsourcing contracts with global healthcare companies.

The company would focus on solutions in the areas of regulatory compliances, enterprise solutions and technology advisory services.

Zensar deputy chairman and managing director Ganesh Natrajan said; "The new venture is part of a strategy to structure its integrated capabilities to meet the growing demands from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors."
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Bolivian Govt. settle $2.0 billion deal with Jindal over ore mine
La Paz: Jindal Steel and Power has signed a joint-venture deal with the Bolivian government of for the development of El Mutun, a site believed to contain one of the world's biggest iron-ore deposits.

The government had changed the conditions of the El Mutun bidding to include a steel production operation in order to generate jobs and supply the country's domestic needs.

Jindal vice chairman, and CEO, Vikrant Gujral said that the company will initially invest over $2.0 billion to mine ore and produce steel -- not only the biggest investment in a single project in Bolivian history, but also a boost for the government of President Evo Morales, which nationalized the energy industry in May.

Bolivia will receive some $200 million a year in profits and taxes as part of the 40-year concession. A final contract is expected to be signed within a month.

The 60-sq-km El Mutun site, which lies near the Brazilian border near the city of Puerto Suarez, is estimated to contain medium quality iron-ore reserves of more than 40 billion tones.
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