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Expansion plans: Tata Steel to borrow $300 mn from IFC
Mumbai: In order to part fund its one million tonne expansion plan, Tata Steel would be taking a $300 million 11-year term loan from International Finance Corporation, or IFC, according to B. Muthuraman, managing director of Tata Steel. IFC is an arm of the World Bank, which extends financial loans to large enterprises from the private sector across the world.

Muthuraman did not disclose the terms and conditions of the loan but said, "We have managed to get the loan on extremely competitive terms which are lower than the existing industry rates."
Sharing the company's plans for the current fiscal, Muthuraman said, "Over the past year we have been focusing our supplies to the automobile sector. In FY04-05, we sold 6,15,000 tonnes to the sector and in FY05-06 we have set up a target of selling 9,00,000 tonnes to the automobile sector in India." He added that the company is also increasing its sales of its branded products, which have risen substantially in FY04-05 at Rs3,362 crores as compared to Rs2,363 crores in FY03-04.

The company will have a capex of Rs2,900 crores in the current fiscal. With regard to Tata Steel's short-term plans, Muthuraman said that in next couple of years the company would focus on maximising the full potential of its Jamshedpur plant by expanding its capacity. The steel major would also focus on executing its Kalinganagar project in Orissa.
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Tata Tele to invest Rs.225 crore in Gujarat
Ahmedabad: Tata Teleservices Ltd, which provides CDMA cellular, fixed wireless phone and wireline phone services in the state, plans to invest Rs225 crore in the Gujarat circle in the current fiscal year.

This is primarily to strengthen its wireless phone services, increase the reach of its optical fibre cable (OFC) backbone and enhance customer services.

The telecom major also aims to substantially increase its customer base in the state. Officials said that the company aims at increasing the subscriber base to 7.50-8 lakh by the end of the current fiscal. Currently Tata Tele has a subscriber base of 5 lakh.

Tata Tele has so far invested around Rs1,000 crore in the Gujarat circle over the past three years or so.

Among the five-lakh subscribers in Gujarat, 60 per cent are in the fixed category (fixed wireless and wireline phones). In 2004-05, Tata Tele added around 300,000 subscribers. Of this, over 200,00 were in the FWP category and the remaining 100,000 in the cellular category.

Currently Tata Tele reaches in 110 towns at present, which will be increased to 150 by June and to 200 towns by December.
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COAI report: Cell firms Q4 revenues up 10.5 per cent
New Delhi: Cellular operators' Average Revenue per User (ARPU) has shown a marginal increase from Rs396 a month to Rs400 during the quarter ending March 2005, a report released by the Cellular Operator's Association of India (COAI) has said.

The average revenues for mobile operators have been on the decline over the last two years with drastic cuts in tariffs. With the cost of offering services declining and the subscriber base increasing, it could not have been better for cellular operators.

According to the report private cellular operators also recorded a rise of 10.5 per cent in revenues in the last quarter of the financial year ended March 2005. The adjusted gross revenues have risen from Rs3,207 crore for the quarter ended December 2004 to Rs3,546 crore for the quarter ended March 2005.

The adjusted gross revenues of private GSM operators have risen from Rs8,304 crore as on March 2004 to Rs12,309 crore as on March 2005, registering an increase of 48.2 per cent during the financial year 2005.

In a press statement, the COAI said, "The ARPU appears to have stabilised at around Rs400 in the financial year 2005. During the January - March 2005 quarter, the Delhi circle has recorded the highest ARPU at Rs514.5, followed closely by Mumbai circle at Rs483.2."

Earlier, PricewaterhouseCoopers had said in a study that the cost incurred by cellular operators per subscriber has fallen drastically from Rs992 per month in 1999 to Rs210 in 2004. In the last one year, the cost per subscriber has decreased by 27 per cent.
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BPL Mobile launches local dialling for calls to Mumbai
Pune: BPL Mobile has announced that effective May 23 its subscribers in Maharashtra and Goa would enjoy local dialling on calls to Mumbai.

A company release said that following a Department of Telecommunications directive, BPL Mobile will offer local calling rates on mobile calls between Mumbai and Maharashtra (including Goa). Now both post-paid and prepaid subscribers will no longer have to pay STD charges on all calls between Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa and subscribers can now dial the number directly without `0' prefix for all calls to Mumbai.

At present, calls between Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata and the rest of the respective States and between East and West Uttar Pradesh are treated as STD calls.
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