Lalit Jalan, Executive Director, Reliance Energy, said the company is likely to see strong growth in the engineering, procurement, and construction, or EPC, from FY09 onwards. "We are looking at 100% growth, or Rs 3,000 crore, in FY09 topline from EPC."

According to Jalan, its Mumbai tariff application is pending with Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission, or MERC. "We might get clearance in May."

Excerpts from exclusive interview with Lalit Jalan:

Q: Your net profit number is quite a bit higher than what most analyst were expecting. Are there any significant other income or Forex gains components out there?

A: No, it is in line with what it was last year. There has been strong growth in operating businesses and our energy businesses was up 50% for the year in terms of the bottomline. And we have the interest income from the cash that is available at hand; but nothing out of the way. Infact there was lot of speculation at one stage that we would have had lot of Forex derivative losses, which we have accounted for complete Mark To Market (MTM) upto March 31. We are almost even so we have just about a Rs 1 crore of profit in the Forex derivatives.

Q: Your Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) business is still not showing robust growth and that has been a big growth driver according to the management, and by when do you think EPC will start showing robust growth numbers?

A: I think you will see very strong EPC numbers going forward starting from ’08-’09. We had new orders of more than Rs 5,000 crore this year and since the projects, which we started 2 years back, are finishing this year, the topline is not very healthy. But in '08-'09 and going forward we our topline would be more than 100% of what we are at today. We can see very high CAGR going forward. We will also be bidding for several EPC projects, the internal projects as well as external projects and we already have a Rs 9,000 crore orderbook with us.

Q: So for the next FY09 what kind of contribution do you see the EPC segment making to your topline?

A: We are looking at the number around Rs 3,000 crore topline from EPC.

Q: What is the latest on the tariff hike in the Mumbai circle?

A: in Mumbai circle, the tariff applications are with the regulators and the tariff for FY08-FY09 would perhaps be given sometime middle of May.

Q: Will Reliance Energy be actively looking for some kind of international acquisition?

A: Now of course all the international acquisition will be handled by Reliance Power and not by Reliance Energy, which is our power wing now. We will look for opportunities. As of today Reliance Power has got projects worth 32 gigawatts in India itself. So unless something is very attractive we will be focusing on India.