Tisco sales up 5%

Tisco reduced its inventory (inventory of steel in stockyard plus steel in transit) from 2,83,106 tonnes on October 1, 1997, to 2,52,800 tonnes on October 1, 1998 — a decline of 11 per cent.

This had been achieved despite shrinking demand and the general tendency of the financial institutions of not sanctioning loans to steel companies, the release said. Credit rating agencies, too, have been downgrading the steel companies.

Industry sources say that if the Tisco management is able to improve its sales realisation, for which it has organised special drives, the company’s financialperformance during the first half of the current fiscal will not be as bad as it was anticipated earlier.

During a recent visit to Calcutta, Tisco managing director J J Irani told The Indian Express that steel prices had reached the bottom in the past three months, indicating that the prices were not going to slide further.

On the production front, crude steel registered an increase of 4.6 per cent from 15,70,043 tonnes to 16,42,500 tonnes and hot metal of 4.8 per cent to 18,02,900 tonnes.