Gayatri firms up African market plan

Owing to a slowdown in Indian infrastructure business, construction firm Gayatri Projects is planning to foray into overseas markets. The company, which intends to explore African countries, is targeting road projects upwards Rs 500 crore to begin with.

“Within the infrastructure sector, business has slowed down in the country. The reforms announced recently will take time to show up results. Overall, the domestic business environment is not very exciting. On the other hand, there are several infrastructure projects coming up in African countries such as Kenya and Uganda,” T V Sandeep Kumar Reddy, MD, Gayatri Projects told Express. The company was in the process of setting up its first wholly-owned overseas subsidiary in Africa. The company’s board, during its meeting held last week, approved the proposal to venture into foreign markets and invest in joint ventures. “We will only look at investing in joint ventures and special purpose vehicles. We are not targeting to acquire any assets overseas,” Reddy said.

To being with, Gayatri Projects will bid for African Engineering, Procurement & Construction (EPC) road contracts.

The company has an order book of Rs 11,850.68 crore. Of this, road projects alone aggregate to Rs 6,852.80 crore, followed by irrigation works worth Rs 4,313.63 crore, power transmission at Rs 273.30 crore and other construction-related projects at Rs 410.95 crore.

Reddy also said, within road projects, the company was not concentrating on Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) works.