Sum RIL will invest in India.
The Birla Matoshree auditorium in South Mumbai was a veritable beehive on Thursday, bustling with shareholders, media and officials of Reliance Industries (RIL). It was RIL’s 39th annual general meeting (AGM), after all.
Only, there was a marked difference in this year’s event. Unlike in recent years, no one was complaining. Indeed, shareholders were buzzing with praise and company officials were smiling.
That set the stage for a beaming Mukesh Ambani, chairman of India’s most profitable company, to announce a massive Rs1.5 lakh crore over the next three years across its verticals, to a massive applause from the house, bursting at the seams. The bulk of this money will go into RIL’s emerging businesses — retail and telecom — besides a huge petrochemicals expansion.
“Your company is investing the largest capital in India by any enterprise — public or private, Indian or foreign. This is an expression of the faith of Reliance in India and in her potential,” the chairman said in his speech, which was aptly headlined ‘Investing in India’s Future’ as against last year’s ‘Partnering for India’s New Future’.
Ambani took the occasion to announce for the first time the individual timelines for completion of various expansions of products under its core business of petchem, which, together with refining, constitute almost 90% of RIL’s revenues.
He said the company’s polyester filament yarn plant at Silvassa will be ready in the first half of this fiscal, while the PET resin plant at Dahej will be ready in the second half. This will be followed by a million tonne PTA plant in the first half of next year, followed by another plant of a similar capacity within the next six months.
The company will also commission a huge capacity in synthetic rubber this fiscal, making it one of the top five producers in terms of earnings.
He said the company’s ethylene cracker facility will make the company the world’s largest producer of LDPE, swing PE and glycol – all variants of petrochemical products.
“With the implementation of all the above projects, your company is on its way to be amongst the top five petrochemical producers in the world,” said Ambani.
In its other core portfolio of refining, Ambani said, RIL is among the top five global independent refiners already and aims to be among the top three.
In fact, even on exploration and production (E&P), where RIL had to face the heat from various stakeholders for its flagging output from the KG Basin, Ambani stressed more on its international ventures, which “indicate that Reliance is well on its way to becoming a global E&P player”.
After being battered by shareholders all of 2011 and 2012, Ambani indeed had a reason to be upbeat as 2013 had brought with it a raft of good news for the company – stellar annual results, rising revenues from shale and retail, new discovery in KG basin and a changing regulatory landscape in the country.
“…I believe in reasonable period of time, regulatory issues will ease out and will be fair to us,” Ambani signed off.
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