Industry Sets Agenda For New Government

Ispat Industries is set to sign off the financial year ended March 31, 1999, with a net profit despite it being a bad year for steel companies.

The company board meets here today to finalise accounts for the last fiscal.

According to industry sources, the company has been helped by improved realisations for galvanised products during the last four months of the fiscal. Industry estimates put the increase in realisation for GP/GC during the December 1998 to March 1999 period at around Rs 500 per tonne.

Ispat Industries' cold rolling mill and coating plant complex at Nagpur has galvanised products or GP/GC as its mainstay and in the previous financial year, the unit produced 1.41 lakh tonne of GP/GC.

During the last financial year, the first phase of the company's 3 million tonne hot strip mill commenced trial production and an estimated one lakh tonne of

HR has been deployed to the Nagpur unit for conversion into GP/GC.

Meanwhile, the company is understood to have cut back production at its 3.50 lakh tonne cold rolling (CR) unit in Nagpur due to severe recession in the CR market.

The company closed the nine months of the last fiscal with a net profit of Rs 28.10 crore while net sales stood at Rs 1057.92 crore.

During the nine months to December 1998, Ispat Energy became a subsidiary of the company.

The cost of the ongoing hot strip mill project at Geetapuram (Dolvi, Maharashtra) was reassessed by the company's lead financier, the Industrial Finance Corporation of India at Rs 6050 crore.

Phase I of the project has been commissioned and Phase II is expected to be commissioned by April 2000.

The company closed the financial year 1997-98 with a net profit of Rs 55.17 crore as compared with Rs 78.83 crore in the previous financial year. The turnover in 1997-98 stood at Rs 1439.13 crore.

The Ispat scrip opened yesterday on the Calcutta Stock Exchange at Rs 4.75 and closed at Rs 4.70.