Energy

India’s Vedanta Chief Sees Revenue Jump to $50bn in 2 Years

Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal speaks at the 2018 Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town. Vedanta has also chosen Gujarat as the site of a chips plant it is setting up with Foxconn. File photo: AFP.

The chairman of India’s metals to oil conglomerate Vedanta Ltd expects annual revenue of $50 billion in the next two to three years – double projected revenues for fiscal year 2023.

The group is looking to ramp up production of metals used in electric car batteries, its chairman Anil Agarwal said.

Vedanta reported 1.327 trillion rupees ($16.05 billion) in revenues in the fiscal year to the end of March, up from 880.2 billion rupees a year earlier.

“We’ll go to $50 billion in two years’ time and this will increase the production of copper, aluminium, zinc,” Agarwal said on the sidelines of an energy industry conference in Abu Dhabi.

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Chip Plant

Vedanta and Taiwan’s Foxconn signed an initial agreement in September to invest $19.5 billion to set up semiconductor and display production plants in Gujarat, the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Agarwal said the choice of Gujarat was decided after input from consultants, as well as Foxconn and Vedanta teams, which looked at incentives, manpower and logistics in several states.

It is not immediately clear when a final agreement would be signed for the semiconductor plant. When asked about this, Agarwal said: “Foxconn people are working, we are working, but this is all done.”

He said Vedanta had total debt of $12 billion.

“We will be in two years’ time zero debt – two or three years’ time,” he said.

Vedanta is interested in potential collaborations with Saudi Arabia’s mining sector and talent pools there, Agarwal said, adding that countries in the Middle East were “very keen” to create an undersea electricity link with the Indian subcontinent.

“I’m very bullish on Middle East,” Agarwal said.

Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard

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Jim Pollard

Jim Pollard is an Australian journalist based in Thailand since 1999. He worked for News Ltd papers in Sydney, Perth, London and Melbourne before travelling through SE Asia in the late 90s. He was a senior editor at The Nation for 17+ years and has a family in Bangkok.