February 18, 2002

'33'

BHARAT ELECTRONICS LIMITED ACQUIRES MINI RATNA STATUS

    Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore has acquired the Mini Ratna Status. BEL is first Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) of the Ministry of Defence to acquire operational status of Mini Ratna Category-I. The Government seeks to make public sector more efficient and competitive by granting enhanced autonomy and delegation of power to make them a consistently profit-making units.  By attaining the Mini Ratna Status, the PSU will have certain amount of autonomy with regard to capital expenditure, establishing joint venture companies, entering into Transfer of Technology (TOT) agreements
and implementation of schemes relating to human resources management. The BEL's Mini Ratna Category-I
status became operational with the Government appointing three non-official, part-time directors on the BEL Board. These part-time directors are Dr. Rammohan Rao of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Padmashri Prof N Balakrishnan, Chairman, Division of Information Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Mr. KN Gupta, Controller of
Certifying Authorities Ministry of Information Technology, New Delhi.  To acquire the Mini Ratna Category - I status a PSU
must have made profit continuously during the past three years, the pre-tax profit should have been over Rs. 30 crores in at least one of the three years and should have a positive net worth. BEL has been consistently making profit and declaring dividend. During the last financial year BEL recorded a turnover of Rs. 1715.33 crores and making a profit after tax of Rs. 155.21 crores. BEL paid 40 per cent dividend during the last fiscal year.