Riding mainly on healthy price realisation on gas and liquid hydrocarbons, state-owned Gas Authority of India ltd's (GAIl) net profit for the period ending March 31, 2013 soared 28 per cent at Rs 618.18 crore against Rs483.34 crore during the corresponding period.
Addressing a press conference, GAIl Chairman B C Tripathi said that the growth was mainly fuelled by the fact that higher gas prices resulted in less subsidy burden, which in turn spurred the net profit.
Meanwhile Tripathi informed that GAIl will raise Rs1,000 crore through a domestic bond issue to partially fund its capital expenditure in the current fiscal.
It plans to invest Rs 7,500 crore in current fiscal, mostly in pipeline expansion. The capex in 2013-14 is higher than Rs6,500 crore investment in the previous financial year.
Of the planned capex for current year, about Rs3,500 crore will come from internal resources or accruals. For the rest, we plan to borrow Rs1,000 crore in next quarter from rupee bond issue and another Rs1,500 crore through external commercial borrowings (ECB)," he said.
GAIl Director (Finance) P K Jain said that a Rs710 crore loan has already been tied-up from Oil Industry Development Board (OIDB) and another Rs140 crore remains to be drawn from loan approved last year.
So, OIDB will this year lend Rs 850 crore to GAIl, he said adding Rs575 crore will be borrowed from HDFC.
Tripathi said that the company had to shell out Rs587.18 crore to subsidise domestic cooking gas (lPG) in January-March as compared to Rs1,397.98 crore in the same period a year ago.
For the full fiscal, GAIl's lPG subsidy outgo at Rs2,687.18 crore was lower than Rs 3,182.62 crore in 2011-12. Its turnover in January-March rose to Rs12,470.70 crore from Rs10,501.33 crore in the corresponding period.