Manila  - The Asian Development Bank said Friday that it was extending a 151-million-dollar loan to help Vietnam expand and improve electricity services in poor and remote communities.

The Manila-based bank said the loan would fund a project to develop up to 10 mini-hydropower plants to serve communities in mountainous areas in north and central Vietnam.

It would also provide financial support to the government's ongoing rural electrification programme.

With the most recent two project orders valued Rs. 1,344 crore from Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL), Larsen and Toubro this week has booked five large orders worth Rs. 5177 crore.

By and large, these contracts are from government units - including Rail Vikas Nigam; Power Grid Corporation; Nuclear Power Corporation; and now MRPL. Over and above these large orders, the engineering and construction major L&T also has quite a few smaller orders in its kitty, pertaining to the company's other unannounced businesses.

The Bangalore-based Navratna defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) has reported a `provisional' turnover of Rs. 4,618 crore for the year 2008-09, indicating a 12 percent increase over the year-before turnover figures of Rs. 4,102.54 crore.

In terms of the turnover per employee, figures depicted a year-on-year increase from Rs. 33.16 lakh to Rs. 38.6 lakh. The value added per employee also depicted an increase from Rs. 16 lakh to Rs. 18 lakh, as BEL exports also went up nearly 15 percent - from $15.43 million to $17.75 million.

In its profit after tax (PAT) statement reported Thursday, the state-managed Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) said that in the financial year that ended March 31, 2009, the company's year-on-year PAT figures showed an increase of 6.9 percent.

While Indian power equipment maker's profit after tax was Rs. 2,859 crore in the financial year 2007, the figures this time round touched Rs. 3,039 crore.

New Delhi, Apr 2: Reliance India Ltd. (RIL) achieved a landmark in the history of oil and gas production when its deep-sea Krishna Godavari basin fields flowed to the surface on Thursday.

Unlike the practice around the world of a minimum nine years, the RIL just took seven years from the date of discovery to begin gas production from the deep-sea KG-D6 block.

According to Petroleum Secretary R S Pandey, India will save USD nine billion in oil import bill annually with the beginning of production from Reliance Industries'' eastern offshore KG D-6 fields.

Vienna  - The price for oil produced by the Organ