IJM Corp Bhd's order book may potentially hit RM9 billion by the financial year ending May 31 2012 from the RM3.7 billion it has in hand now.

The bulk of the increase will come from the RM5 billion worth of new orders for the New Pantai Expressway (NPE) extension and the West Coast Expressway.

Chief executive officer and managing director Datuk Teh Kean Ming said the RM9 billion order book will surpass IJM's record RM6.5 billion set in 2007.

Moving forward, IJM will focus on the domestic market as overseas business namely in India, its key market, is economically more expensive.

About 75 of IJM's projects are from Malaysia and the balance, abroad. Its overseas projects are mostly in India.

"The prospects of building up the order book in the local market is encouraging," he told reporters after the company's annual general meeting here yesterday.

IJM is banking on the many large infrastructure projects proposed under the Economic Transformation Programme to supplement its future order book.

Teh revealed that IJM has been pre-qualified as a tenderer of the MRT project.

HwangDBS in a recent research report noted that potential jobs in the pipeline for IJM include the MRT non-tunneling works for the Blue Line worth RM11 billion, and government building jobs such as the KL Financial District, RRIM land and Jalan Cochrane land.

On overseas jobs, he said the landscape is seen as "challenging and not conducive" for the next few years, and therefore will concentrate on the domestic front.

India is exposed to risks such as higher interest rate regime and escalating cost of raw materials.

Chief financial officer Cyrus Eruch Daruwalla said India will still be a key market for infrastrucure works but IJM would bid if the margins are decent.

IJM has five highway concessions in India with two of them wholly-owned and the other three on a joint venture basis.

IJM is close to finalising plans to buy out and wholly own two of the three joint venture concessions.

It plans to increase its 35 per cent stake to about 99 per cent in the Swarna Tollway, which has been operating for seven years and buy the other 50 per cent in the newer Chikaluripet-Vijayawada Tollway.

IJM announced a 34.2 per cent increase in net profit for the first quarter ended June 30 2011 to RM115 million, mainly due to growth in its construction and industry divisions as well as higher margins in the plantation and infrastructure divisions.

Turnover was up 4.8 per cent to RM1 billion compared with RM986 million in the corresponding period last year. - Business Times