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CPCL's Q1 net plunges 95 pc

Our Bureau

CHENNAI, Sept 18

CHENNAI Petroleum Corporation Ltd's net profit for the first quarter of the current financial year is down by 94.54 per cent to Rs 1.95 crores, as against Rs 35.77 crores in the first quarter of last year, the company's Chairman and Managing Director, Mr S. Rammohan, said at the company's annual general meeting today.

The fall in the net profit is due to the rise in international prices of crude oil -- CPCL's raw material. Nearly 90 per cent of CPCL's sales come from products whose prices are still fixed by the Government. Since no upward price revision has been made by the Government, the increasing input costs have eaten into the company's profits.

Mr Rammohan told shareholders that Solomon Associates Inc of the US had been hired by CPCL (formerly MRL) for advising it on how to improve profitability. The American company is said to have the data pertaining to several refineries all over the world, and hence would be in a position to benchmark CPCL's performance against another appropriate refinery's operations, and draw useful conclusions.

Mr Rammohan said that the company had achieved a turnover of Rs 600 crore last year from sale of products that were outside the `administered pricing mechanism'. ``Further initiatives are being taken to do direct marketing in the area of industrial LPG, rubber process oils, bitumen emulsion and polymer modified bitumen'', Mr Rammohan said.

In the current year, the company expects its turnover from non-APM products to increase to Rs 800 crore. Also on the anvil is a Rs 25-crore project to reduce the sulphur content of the diesel produced by the refinery to 0.05 per cent. The project would b e completed in a year's time.