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Kolkata , Dec. 16

THE RP Goenka group is looking at an investment of about Rs 2,000 crore in its group companies within the next two to three years.

Mr Sanjiv Goenka, Vice-Chairman of the group's flagship company CESC, said that the group might tap the market to fund this capital expenditure.

"We are right now on a consolidation mode and we are taking a re-look at our portfolio," he said at a press conference. He said that the group has selected three areas for extreme focus . These were power and the related areas, tyres and its raw materials, and retailing. He said that the group had sold off or divested its stake in 19 companies over the last three years or so since they were not its areas of core competence. Over Rs 500 crore has been raised through these sales.

However, although entertainment was not in this slot, the company was "passionate" about this area and had taken up the revival of the loss-making Saregama as a challenge. The group, which has re-entered film making, is about to complete the shooting of a film with new star casts. He said that while a major retail outfit is slated to be opened in Mumbai by February, three of these department stores are planned to be set up here.

Mr Goenka said that the group proposes to reduce the workforce across companies to 42,000 in two years from the current strength of 50,000. He said that this reduction would be in addition to the reduction of over 12,000 effected over the last two years.

While about 7,000 people have been retired from Harrison's Malayalam, 210 people have left Ceat and another 225 from Philips Carbon Black . CESC has just completed a VRS where 2,300 applications were received.

On CESC, he said that an internal study is on, to examine the options on hiving off the various activities of the company into separate companies. "We expect to take a final decision on this by February and the financial engineering that this might entail was likely to include issue of new shares." He also said CESC also planned to go for rating after which it will take a look at the interest rates that it was now paying.

He said that while the company wanted to get speedy clearances for its proposed new thermal power plant no decision has yet been taken on its location. "The site of the New Mulajore power plant which has just been shut down remains an option."

As to whether CESC would float another VRS soon, he said that it was a very lopsided picture of things when only 500 persons run a 500-MW power plant (Budge Budge) and the rest of the nearly 9,000 people are employed in the remaining activities. "We need to raise productivity to a level where we can fulfil our objective of being the first company in India to ask for a tariff reduction."

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