PORT LOUIS, May 27 – India’s leading public sector oil company IOC is planning fresh investments to expand its capacity in Mauritius after establishing itself as a major fuel retailer in the island nation.
It is also looking to expand into other African markets by turning Mauritius into its base for the region, IndianOil Mauritius Ltd (IOML) managing director Ranjan Kumar Mohapatra (photo) said.
IOML is a wholly owned subsidiary of Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOC), a leading public sector undertaking (PSU) and largest oil company in India, Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.
It entered Mauritius in 2002 and began operations in 2004 after setting up terminals and other facilities.
“Yes, we are trying to make Mauritius a base to enter Africa. In the first phase, we would like to take our lubricant product Servo to Africa.
“Currently we are not exporting anything, but we being a Free Port entity in Mauritius would have significant benefits once we start exporting to Africa,” Mohapatra said.
A Free Port entity in Mauritius gets various tax breaks for operating from the country’s ports for exports to Africa.
Mohapatra said IOML’s turnover rose to MUR 7.2 billion in the last fiscal and the company plans to invest MUR 175 million in the current 2013-2014 fiscal year.
“We will be building tanks for increasing our aviation fuel facility in Mauritius. We would also like to expand our filling station network in terms of numbers and facilities. There would be some other small investments there this fiscal,” he said.
IOML has 18 filling stations in Mauritius and is a major supplier of aviation fuel with about 49 per cent market share in this segment. It has an overall market share of 23.4 per cent across all petroleum products.
“In aviation fuel segment, there are further growth opportunities. Although our market share is close to 50 per cent, we have been constrained to some extent due to lack of sufficient tankage facility and investment in building the new tank would address that issue,” said Mohapatra.
On his targets, Mohapatra said: “We would look at having at least 25 per cent of all filling stations in the country; there are about 170 filling stations and one-fourth of that would be more than 40 stations. We would reach that level in stages.” (1 USD = 31.55 MUR)
-BERNAMA
