Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) on Thursday reported a lower-than-expected 6 percent rise in provisional profit for FY’09 due to wage rise this year. But still company remained upbeat on future orders despite the economic slowdown.

India’s top power equipment maker BHEL said it had 1.17 trillion rupees ($23 billion) of orders on its books as at March 31, the end of the 2008/09 fiscal year.

Chairman K. Ravi Kumar expected about 500 billion rupees of new orders during FY’10, which he said would help BHEL achieve sales growth of 20-25 percent.

BHEL said its provisional net profit for 2008/09 rose 6.3 percent to 30.39 billion (3039 crore)rupees from 28.59 billion, with revenue rising 28.5 percent to 275.05 billion rupees from 214.01 billion.

Provisions of 17.28 billion rupees for a pending wage rise backdated to January 2007 had weighed on profit, but Kumar said with normal wage growth expected this year he hoped net profit would to rise.

“Profit will go up because we have provided everything this year,” he said.

BHEL will invest 10 billion rupees to expand a plant in north India for a forging venture with the UK’s Sheffield Forgemasters, Kumar said, adding the company was also talking to a couple of firms from Europe and Japan for a possible transmission venture.

The shares of BHEL have seen a good rise of 12.4% for the current year 2009.