Gas Authority of India (GAIL) is mulling to restructure its gas transportation, marketing and petrochemical businesses into separate subsidiaries, as it aims to more than double its turnover to Rs 50,000 crore over a period of two years.
The company had already formed a subsidiary for city gas projects that sold CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households, and was looking at similar units for each of its business, GAIL India Chairman and Managing Director U D Choubey told reporters after President Pratibha Patil released a special stamp to mark the company's silver jubilee year.
"In the next 25 years, we see GAIL as a company worth over Rs 2,00,000 crore," he said.
GAIL turnover, he said, would rise to Rs 50,000 crore by March 2011 from Rs 19,411.36 crore in 2007-08 fiscal. "For this, we are considering forming different subsidiaries for our business such as (gas) distribution (or marketing), LPG, production of petrochemicals, gas transportation, foreign acquisitions and city gas."
Choubey said GAIL's expansion plans would not be affected by the global financial crisis, as it had enough internal resources to meet the requirements.
"We have cash reserves of about Rs 14,000 crore and we are generating about Rs 4,000 crore cash surplus every year," he said. "Investments in pipeline will not in any way be affected."
The gas monopoly plans to invest about Rs 30,000 crore in laying new pipelines, expanding capacity of its petrochemical plant and setting up city gas distribution projects in the country over the next five years.
"We do not need debt before end of 2009 and hopefully, the financial crisis would be tied over by then," he said.
