Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd has paid Rs 103.84 crore (Rs 1.04 billion) to the government as 60 per cent interim dividend for 2003-04.

The refineries have undertaken projects for quality improvement of their products and the refineries at Visakhapatnam and Mumbai have so far processed 10.236 MMTPA of crude for the current year, HPCL informed the Bombay Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

The retail strategic business unit commissioned 281 new outlets during the last eight months, taking the total to 5144 while the corporation's retail outlet branding exercise under Club HP banner has now been extended to 904.

HPCL's branded petrol Power is now available across 512 retail outlets in the country.

The corporation has been placing special emphasis on its 2,681 highway outlets and on its 100 other outlets, which have been recently modernised. HPCL has so far achieved total market sales of 12.07 MMTPA during the period April-November 2003 with a market share of 20.44 per cent.

HPCL said the enterprise resource planning software was in the advanced stage of implementation across the corporation to provide online information and other customer relationship management initiatives.