THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With its already-frail financial health showing signs of further decline, missile firm BrahMos Aerospace Thiruvananthapuram Ltd (BATL) is faced with the possibility of being referred to the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).
With the BIFR cloud looming, the BATL management has desperately submitted a set of proposals to the parent firm, the Indo-Russian JV BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd (BAPL), for injecting life into the seven-year-old company. Over the years BATL has been involved in a bitter struggle to drag itself out of loss. Although the audited figures for 2013-14 are yet to be made public, sources said that the company has sustained a loss of approximately Rs 4.15 crore that fiscal. The loss stood at Rs 3.24 crore in 2012-13. The net loss of the company - as per a reply given by Industries Minister P K Kunhalikutty in the Kerala Assembly recently - had stood at Rs 20.09 crore in 2012-13. “The threat is there. Our accumulated loss also has been growing, but we can say anything definite only after the audited accounts are out in September,” BATL managing director (in-charge) Vinod Shankar said on the possibility of the company being referred to BIFR. BIFR comes under the Union Finance Ministry, and helps sick industries to get back on their feet or orders closure in hopeless cases. It may be called that a major reason for the formation of BATL through a take-over was the brittle financial situation of Kerala hi-Tech Industries Ltd (KELTEC), BATL’s state government-run predecessor. KELTEC, declared sick, was under the care of BIFR but got discharged on September 1, 2007, months before the much-publicised acquisition. BAPL, the JV which manufactures BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, took over KELTEC in December that year. The revival package submitted by the BATL management to BAPL recommends the establishment of around five product lines and sourcing orders from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and BAPL.
“We in fact have orders to the tune of Rs 171 crore in our kitty, but the trouble is that 90 per cent of it is developmental in nature. We need production orders to keep the money coming in. Such orders can be provided by our parent company and DRDO,” Vinod Shankar said. Amid its battle with fragile finances, BATL has also had to handle labour disputes and find land for expansion. The firm had managed, after much wangling, to obtain an Air Force plot neighbouring it, where a Missile Integration Complex (MIC) was inaugurated, in 2012. But the MIC too is yet to witness the predicted growth.