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| Heavy burden |
New Delhi, Feb. 8: Net profit of ONGC fell 5 per cent in the December quarter to Rs 6,741.41 crore against Rs 7,083.23 crore a year ago on account of a sharp rise in the fuel subsidy outgo.
Profits would have fallen more but for a one-time gain of Rs 3,142 crore that the PSU received as royalty from Cairn India’s Rajasthan oilfields for the period between August 2009 and September 2011.
Vedanta Resources, which bought a majority stake in Cairn India last year, had agreed to share the burden of royalty to the government with ONGC.
Subsidy outgo to refiners nearly tripled to Rs 7,172 crore in the quarter from Rs 2,404 crore a year earlier.
While oil marketing companies set retail prices for petrol, the government controls the prices of diesel, cooking gas and kerosene, and the revenue loss is shared with upstream firms and the government.
Fuel retailers IOC, BPCL and HPCL lost Rs 97,300 crore selling diesel, domestic cooking gas and kerosene during the nine months of the fiscal.
Upstream firms had contributed Rs 30,297 crore out of the total revenue loss of Rs 78,189 crore in the 2010-11 fiscal.
Cognizant growth
Nasdaq-listed IT services provider Cognizant has reported a 16.44 per cent growth in net income at $240.1 million for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2011 against $206.2 million in the same period of the previous fiscal.
Revenues rose 26.9 per cent to $1.66 billion from $1.31 billion in the year-ago quarter.
For the year, revenue rose 33 per cent to $6.12 billion against $4.59 billion in 2010.
“We are very pleased, once again, to deliver industry leading revenue growth in 2011 while maintaining stable margins and investing for our long-term success,” said Francisco D’Souza, chief executive officer of Cognizant.
The company had in the last quarter inched past Wipro to take the third spot behind TCS and Infosys.
During the current fiscal, the government has so far provided Rs 30,000 crore in cash subsidy to partially make up for the revenues that IOC, BPCL and HPCL lost on fuel sales during first half.