Pratibha Industries Ltd is scouting for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts in the

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Middle East and SAARC nations, and the construction and infrastructure firm has bid for overseas projects worth 10 billion rupees, a top official said.

"We are bidding for projects in Abu Dhabi, we have bid for projects in Saudi, we have bid for projects in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka," Group Director and head of marketing Yogen Lal told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

"Strategically, we feel that we need to diversify our operations and not be dependent on any one geography," he said explaining the rationale behind the move.

The exposure to the foreign construction sector would also help introduce best practices in India.

Pratibha Industries, which is executing a 3.5-billion-rupee overseas project for Dubai Electricity & Water Authority, has put in total overseas bids of about 10 billion rupees, Lal said.

The bids are mainly for water treatment, transmission and reservoirs, he said declining to provide the details.

PROJECTS BACK HOME

The company has emerged as the lowest bidder for domestic projects worth 4.50 billion rupees, mainly from the government sector.

"These are projects in the water and building sectors, and we expect some of them to materialise in this quarter only," Lal said.

India expects to invest about $500 billion in infrastructure, mainly in power, telecoms, roads, railways and oil pipelines, in five years to the end of March 2012.

The country also aims to double infrastructure spending to $1 trillion in its next five-year plan, which runs from April 2012.

The firm, which has an order backlog of 56 billion rupees as on date, expects to close the financial year with an order book of 60 billion rupees. It had a net debt of about 3.77 billion rupees as on March 31.

He sees the firm achieving 15-16 billion rupees revenue in FY12, against 12.73 billion rupees in FY11.

"As far as our company is concerned we are confident, now with these fresh orders and given the state of our order book, of maintaining an uptrend of 25 percent."

The firm, which had earlier raised 500 million rupees by issuing equity and another 1 billion rupees through institutional stake sale, has no immediate fund raising plans.

The Mumbai-based firm has also withdrawn its bid for the hovercraft services project connecting the city with the suburbs.

He declined to provide any specific outlook for the quarter, but said "it has been good". "We are not seeing too many opportunities, but we have been lucky...."

At 10.53 a.m., shares of the company were down 1.19 percent at 58.05 rupees in a steady Mumbai market.