Reliance Industries tied up for $6.5-billion long-term credit: Mukesh Ambani

Reliance Industries (RIL), India's largest private company, has tied-up $6.5-billion long-term credit facilities in the last financial year to complete building its 4G network and for its petrochemical expansion.

As part of the company's largest capital expenditure cycle, RIL has invested over Rs 1,00,000 crore ($16 billion) in the last financial year, Chairman Mukesh Ambani said in his letter to shareholders. "This large investment spread across all our businesses will create sustained and significant value for our stakeholders," he added.

The $16-billion investment is the highest by any Indian corporate in a single year and is about 0.8 per cent of India's GDP, Ambani said. RIL achieved its highest ever consolidated net profits of Rs 23,566 crore in the last fiscal, when its energy and consumer businesses continued showing strong growth.

The company said that Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) has been working aggressively in achieving the minimum rollout obligations. RJio was allotted Mobile Switching Centre Code (MSC), Mobile Country Code (MCC) and Mobile Network Code (MNC) for mobile access services across all 22 circles by the Department of Telecom (DoT), hence providing it with about 22 million mobile phone numbers across India to provide mobile access services.

RJio has also been allotted crucial Signalling Point (SP) codes by DoT for launching National Long Distance (NLD) and International Long Distance (ILD) services. In addition, RJio has received clearances to set up international internet gateways by Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) and DoT. RJio has adopted a partnership-based model for telecom infrastructure for 4G wireless and fibre based high speed broadband services.

In line with this strategic intent, RJio and its wholly owned subsidiaries have finalised the agreements with Indus Towers, GTL Infra, Ascend Telecom, Tower Vision and ATC India for sharing towers. There is also an agreement with Reliance Communications (RCOM) for sharing of intercity and intra-city optic fibre infrastructure and towers.

"Our efforts to provide 4G services across the country are gathering momentum. During the year, based on our acquisition of additional spectrum, we have emerged as the largest holder of liberalised spectrum in India," said Ambani.

RJio has made significant progress including physical network infrastructure, systems and processes, sales and distribution network, applications and services and content. "We are currently working with several strategic partners in deployment and testing activities currently underway," he added.

In oil and gas, the domestic upstream production was lower due to natural decline in the producing fields. RIL and its partners (BP and Niko) are trying to augment production through interventions - like side-track wells and onshore terminal booster compressor - to partly offset the natural decline, said Ambani.

During the year, the company has opened over 300 fuel retailing outlets after the deregulation of petrol and diesel prices. Ambani said that the company plans to re-commission the entire network of 1,400 outlets by the end of FY 2015/16. The petcoke gasification project, designed to convert low-value petroleum coke into high value syngas (synthesised gas), is under execution.

In retail, the company had a net addition of 930 stores - at a rate of almost 18 new stores every week, said Ambani.