Birla Copper is a division of Indo Gulf Fertilisers & Chemicals Corp Ltd ,a member of the Aditya Birla group of companies. The firm's custom copper smelter located in Gujarat started operations in late May, Jalan said. The project has an annual capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum (TPA) of copper cathodes with an in-built capacity of up to 150,000 TPA by 2001, officials said.

"In the long term, all the fundamentals show that if the infrastructure and country has to grow and achieve a gross domestic product growth rate of seven per cent, then copper must grow at the rate of nine per cent," Jalan said.

"But we have tried to be more conservative to see what should be the realisticpattern."

Jalan said an economic slowdown in India had affected demand for copper in the electrical sector, but it had been offset by a demand rise in the telecom sector.

Industrial growth in India grew by 6.3 per cent in April 1998 year-on-year compared to a growth of just 3.9 per cent in April 1997, government data shows.

India's annual copper demand is estimated at about 300,000 tonnes compared to an output of 50,000 tonnes, industry officials say. Jalan said the major push for copper demand in India will come from an increase in power generation capacity.

"If new plants for power come up, it is going to add to the consumption of copper," he said. "That is the main growth engine for copper consumption."The budget for 1998/99 outmarked a 35 per cent jump in spending on key infrastructure sectors to Rs 611.46 billion.

"Slowly and slowly, with the start up of indigenous copper plants, the demand supply gap is being bridged," Jalan said. Jalan said the company has started operations at its customcopper smelter in Gujarat from late May."The refinery was started in February end-March 1998 and our original estimate was that the plant will start in March 1998," he said.

"The smelter became operational in late May," Jalan said. The project has an annual capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum of copper cathodes with a built-in expansion of up to 150,000 tpa by 2001, officials said. The technology for the plant is sourced from Finnish metal's group, Outokumpu."This year (1998/99 (April-March), we expect a capacity utilisation of around 60 percent for the smelter. Next year, this should be in the region of about 85 per cent." "The smelter will produce 60,000 tonnes of copper cathodes in 1998/99," Jalan said.