Google

Thursday, August 7, 2008

NTPC Ltd new joint venture

NTPC Ltd, Asian Development Bank (ADB), GE Energy Financial Services, Kyushu Electric Power Co and Brookfield Renewable Power will form a joint venture company to undertake renewable power generation.

The companies on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to form a joint venture company for generating renewable power. NTPC would hold a 40 per cent stake in the company while the remaining would be equally shared by other entities. The joi nt venture company would develop greenfield and under-utilised potential sites to establish 500 MW of renewable power generation sources in the country.

The company would seek to develop projects in the country and may consider investing abroad in the near future. Initially, the company would concentrate on wind power, mini and micro-hydro electric power. The Chairman of the joint venture entity would b e nominated by NTPC.

Read More...

Friday, August 1, 2008

RBI hikes repo rate CRR

On 29 July 2008, the Reserve Bank of India increased the repo rate by 50 basis points to 9 per cent. It also hiked the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 25 basis points to 9 per cent beginning 30 August 2008.

While the repo rate hike is expected to make overnight funds costlier for banks, the CRR hike is expected to marginally reduce the lendable funds of banks.

Banks are aggressively using the repo facility of the RBI since the beginning of July. They borrowed almost Rs.38,900 crore per day from the RBI through its liquidity adjustment facility. Therefore the hike in the repo rate by the RBI will surely put some pressure on the cost of funds of banks.

The 25 basis points hike in the cash reserve ratio will suck out about Rs.8,000-8,500 crore of liquidity from the banking system. This will reduce the lendable resources of banks and, coupled with the repo rate hike, will bring the net interest margins of banks a bit under pressure.

Surplus liquidity in the banking system stood at a robust Rs.1,37,215 lakh crore as on 18 July 2008. About Rs.1,30,000 of this surplus liquidity comprises long term securities issued under the market stabilisation scheme. None of these securities are maturing before April 2009.

In this context, it may be noted that demand for credit remains high with credit growth well outpacing deposit growth. SCB credit is growing at around 25-26 per cent while SCB deposits are growing by around 21-22 per cent. According the disaggregated data from the monetary authority's quarterly review, growth in credit to industry accelerated further from 26.4 per cent a year ago to 26.9 per cent as on 23 May 2008. Growth in credit to small scale industries accelerated sharply from 29.5 per cent to 52.1 per cent during this period. However, the continuous rise in interest rates over the past one year did take its toll on personal loans. Growth in personal loans slowed from 23.9 per cent a year ago to 15.9 per cent as on 23 May 2008.

Read More...

TATA Steel 2007-08 results

TATA Steel Limited has announced the following audited results for the year ended March 31st 2008

TATA Steel has posted a net profit of INR 46870.30 million for the year ended March 31st 2008 up by 11% YoY as compared to INR 42221.50 million for the year ended March 31st 2007. Total income has increased from INR 179847.60 million for the year ended March 31st 2007 to INR 200282.80 million for the year ended March 31st 2008, registering a growth of 11.3% YoY.

The consolidated results are as follows
TATA Steel has posted a profit after minority interest & share of profits of associates of INR 123499.80 million for the year ended March 31st 2008 up by 195.6% YoY as compared to INR 41772.70 million for the year ended March 31st 2007. Total income has increased from INR 256504.50 million for the year ended March 31st 2007 to INR 1321100.90 million for the year ended March 31st 2008, registering a growth of 415% YoY.

Addressing the media, Mr B Muthuraman MD of TATA Steel said that the TATA Steel group vision was to set a global benchmark in value creation and to increase the return on capital invested to 30% by 2012. He added that "Our aspiration in due course is to become a 50 million tonne plus steel company. Our bearings and tubular divisions are working on products for the TATA Nano."

Read More...

Google