Announcing unaudited financial results, BHEL chairman and managing director K G Ramachandran said extraordinary income due to interest on income tax refund and withdrawal of excess provisions of income tax had increased the company's net profits by a substantial Rs 164 crore to Rs 720 crore in 1997-98.

Ramachandran said that BHEL had managed to attain a 4.5-per cent increase in its turnover despite an economic slowdown in the country evident since November 1996. ``In fact, in the capital goods sector, it was not merely a slowdown but afull-blown recession that the sector has been suffering from and which is likely to continue till January 2000.''

He, however, said that the company expected to achieve a single-digit growth even during 1999-2000 despite the adverse conditions in the sector. BHEL is expecting to start the financial year 1999-2000 with a book order of over Rs 10,000 crore, he said.

The corporation's export orders also increased two-and-a-half times to Rs 250 crore during the year from Rs 91 crore in 1997-98. The corporation recorded a marginal increase of Rs 1 crore in profit before tax at Rs 941 crore during 1998-99 as compared with Rs 940 crore during 1997-98.

BHEL's earning per share (EPS) increased to Rs 23.2 from Rs 22.7 during this period. During the last financial year, the corporation also made its entry into the petroleum sector by bagging a Rs 200-crore contract to set up a 90-mw gas turbine project in Oman on a turnkey basis, Ramachandran said.