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Tatas setting up two hotels in South Africa
Monday, 22 September 2008, 16:24 IST
Durban: The $62.5 billion Tata group is setting up two hotels in South Africa and will start assembling an array of automobiles in Johannesburg as part of the plans to invest 10 million rands ($1.2 billion) in the country, a top official has said.
"We are now constructing two hotels. The first one has started in Cape Town and the second one will be in Johannesburg," Raman Dhawan, managing director of Tata Africa, said.
"We also tried to build a hotel in Durban, but due to some issues we could not start that. But we will come back as and when those issues are resolved, the official told an event Thursday evening to award scholarships to students.
"We look forward to be back here in Durban to build that hotel," he added, as the first set of scholarships were given away for postgraduate students of the University of KwaZulu Natal.
Dhawan said the group also had a major presence in the South Africa's telecom industry through its majority stake in Neotel, the second national fixed line licensee here.
This apart, Tata Consultancy Services, which he described as "one of the jewels in the Tata group", is also operating in the information technology both in South Africa and the rest of the continent.
"We are a very diversified group. Currently, what we also have in South Africa is automobiles. We make bus bodies in Johannesburg, and we are looking at assembling vehicles as well," Dhawan said.
Since the first sale in 2005, the Tata have more than 39,000 passenger and light commercial vehicles on South African roads, and close to 50,000 medium and heavy commercial vehicles.
This apart, a major investment of some $100 million has gone into a ferrochrome smelter in Richards Bay that makes 130 tonnes of the commodity.
As one of the first Indian companies to enter Africa almost six decades ago, the group now has a presence in 11 countries in the continent with investments worth billions of dollars through its affiliate, Tata Africa.
Dhawan said the group's association with this country dated back to 1909 when Mahatma Gandhi called for support of his Passive Resistance Movement against what was later called apartheid.
"Tata got actively involved at that time," he said, adding that since the group could not invest in South Africa because of the apartheid regime, the operations could start here only 13 years ago.
The Tata official said his group was among the few Indian industrial houses that managed to successfully traverse three centuries during its 140-year existence, thanks to the philosophy of "what comes from the people must go back".
"In Tata Sons, which is the apex body of the group, 66 percent of the profits go to philanthropy," he said, adding this had resulted in many social institutions like the Tata Memorial Hospital, a leading cancer research centre in the world.
Source: IANS
Source: IANS