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Aksh's $170mn US export order on hold

Aksh Optifibre, India's second largest optic fibre maker, said a $170 million cables export order to the United States was "in abeyance" as the customer was seeking to renegotiate prices.

Aksh's managing director Kailash Choudhari said in a message to shareholders on the firm's website www.akshoptifibre.com that the customer wanted to renegotiate the order as prices appeared to be softening amid the US slowdown.

"However, Aksh does not consider it necessary to lower the prices since in our opinion the prices settled with our US customer are realisable," he said.

N K Ahuja, vice-president finance of Aksh told Reuters on Monday the order was not cancelled and indicated there could be some flexibility.

"The window of renegotiation is open. But we are not sure whether we should do it presently or not at all," he said.

Aksh, which supplied 62 per cent of its output to state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd last year, has been planning to target the export market aggressively.

BSNL also recently cancelled an optical fibre tender for which Aksh was the lowest bidder.

But Ahuja said Aksh was hopeful of a BSNL order as the firm had already re-tendered for the same quantities.

He said Aksh currently has an order book worth 800-900 million rupees to be executed over the next four months.

Aksh posted a net profit of Rs 100.18 million in the three months to June 30, 2001, 32 times its year-ago profit of Rs 3.12 million.

Its sales rose 180.6 per cent to Rs 599.47 million from Rs 213.67 million.

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