Speaking to mediapersons here, Gujarat Gas managing director Edwin Bowles said the company is in the process of exploring avenues open in the telecom arena. "Just as we have tied up with ICICI recently for providing personal finance services to our customers including multi-utility services and credit cards, similarly we are exploring the possibility of tying up with a telecom company to enable us to offer preferential telephony services to our customers."

Apart from that, the company is also looking at possibilities of laying multi-utility cables which apart from carrying gas, could also have cables for telephony, cable TV etc.

In the current year, the company, which has emerged as a major private gas distribution company in the country with its core business in distributing natural gas to domestic, commercial and industrial customers in Gujarat, is also planning aggressive promotion of CNG as an economical and environment friendly fuel. In this regard, Gujarat Gas is currently conducting tests on CNG driven three-wheelers in Surat. Bowles maintains that there is enormous scope for the fuel in this segment. "Just as there are almost 11,000 taxis successfully running on CNG in Mumbai, similarly we are planning to promote CNG as the preferred fuel for three wheelers in Surat." Bowles said Gujarat Gas was working out innovative financing schemes such as leasing the kits or subsidising them for three-wheeler owners. "We have a target of converting at least 4,000 three wheelers in Surat to CNG this year," he disclosed.

Bowles revealed that the state government had even offered free land for setting up CNG pumps in the state. However,availability of gas is still a handicap which the company is trying to overcome and has sought more gas allocation from domestic gas major GAIL as well as ONGC.

The company has also declared its financial results for the year ended December 1999, posting an impressive increase of 29 per cent in sales on an annualised basis.

Gujarat Gas has changed its accounting period from the financial year to calender year and hence the declared results are for a nine-month period.

While sales for the period stood at Rs 183.49 crore, the gross profit registered an impressive increase of 20.77 per cent on an annualised basis at Rs 44.2 crore as compared to the gross profit of Rs 48.8 crore for the 12-month period in 1998-99. The net profit was Rs 28.6 crore for the nine month period while the pre-provision net profit recorded a growth of 51 per cent on an annualised basis. The earning per share stood at Rs 29.73 on an annualised basis. The board of directors have proposed a dividend of Rs 8 per share on a pro-rata basis, that is, Rs 6 for the nine-month period ended December 1999.