The board of directors in a meeting on Wednesday has decided that two interim dividends of 40 per cent announced earlier may be treated as total dividend for the year.

Intensive cost rationalisation carried out by the company during last few years and better market conditions for most of the products of the company have led to a sharp improvement in profit margins. Better sales realisations and higher capacity utilisation in all the sectors also boosted the profitability.

Ajay and Vikram Shriram managed, DCM Shriram commissioned additional 10mw power plant at its Kota complex in the second half of 1999-2000, thus increasing the company's total power generation capacity to 85mw. The company recently ventured into water treatment chemicals business in order to boost its range of value added products. During the year, the company acquired the PVC compounding facilities of Nocil and relocated it at Kota.

This has made the company the largest compounding player in the country.The company's fully-owned subsidiary, Ghaghara Sugar Ltd (GSL) has performed well during the year and achieved a total cane crush of over 60 lakh quintal during the current sugar season, a record for any sugar mill to have achieved in the third year of its operations in the state of UP. It has achieved sugar recovery of over 10 per cent, the highest in central Uttar Pradesh.