KARACHI, May 1: The board of directors of Sui Southern Gas Company in its meeting held here approved the accounts for the 3rd quarter and cumulative for the nine months period ended March 31, 2004.

A press release issued here on Saturday said during this period the company had sales revenue of Rs34.779 billion as compared to Rs25.894 billion during the same period last year.

The company earned a pre-tax profit of Rs1.428 billion against the last year's pre-tax profit of Rs1.371 billion, indicating an increase of 4.16 per cent.

The gas sales in volume, was 235,292 mmcf during the period from 184,100 mmcf during the previous period, which increased by 34pc by value, whereas the same registered an increase of 28pc by volume.

SSGC achieved a record of transmitting more than one billion cubic feet gas per day during January 2004 and has since than maintained sales close to or above the 1,000 mmcfd. During the period ended March 31, 2004, the company laid 592 km of mains and services, and added 46,898 customers comprising 197 industrial, 883 commercial and 45,818 domestic.

The board observed that the performance continued throughout the period and further new initiatives were launched. Concurrently, with operations and management restructuring business process re-engineering (BPR) was also initiated.

Efforts to enhance good corporate governance also continued at all level of operations to improve company's performance, efficiency and productivity.

The board of director's also observed that the company was working on a five-year development plan to supply gas to new towns and villages, which were deprived of the facility previously.

Under this programme 36 schemes in Sindh are under consideration. Physical execution on 15 schemes has been started and nine villages have been commissioned.

Similarly, there are 12 schemes in Balochistan for providing gas to small towns and villages. Physical work on six schemes has been started and one town and 13 villages have been connected to the gas distribution network.-APP