Reliance Industries lost ground for the second successive day on Wednesday hit by the downgrade by Moody's in its outlook for the company's senior unsecured debt on Tuesday.

The scrip of the giant petrochemicals maker and petroleum refiner edged lower by 2.1 per cent to Rs 288.10 by midway trading.

Around 1.24 million Reliance Industries shares were traded on BSE so far. The scrip had dipped 0.24 per cent to Rs 294.55 on Tuesday.

The current decline on the counter comes after a surge over the last few months. The scrip was boosted earlier by the company's huge gas find in the Krishna-Godavari basin in Andhra Pradesh.

On Tuesday, global agency Moody's Investors Service said it had affirmed Reliance Industries' Ba2 ratings for senior unsecured debt securities, but changed the outlook to negative from stable.

Moody's said the change in outlook reflected concerns about the Reliance group's recent aggressive expansion. Last month, group company Reliance Infocomm announced that it had launched limited radius mobility services.

RIL launched Infocomm (information and communication) mobile services nationwide on 27 December 2002 - the birthday of its founder late Dhirubhai Ambani.

Reliance Infocomm is expected to roll out other basic telephony services in 17 states. It has already laid 40,000 km of optic fibre across the country to cover various facets of telecom services including basic, Internet and long distance.

Reliance Infocomm is expected to provide cheaper services than already existing rates. It is banking on a lower margin-high volume game. RIL has reportedly invested a huge sum in Reliance Infocomm. It has a 45 per cent stake in Reliance Infocomm.

Late October 2002, RIL, petrochemicals maker, oil refiner and the country's largest private sector company, said that its Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin (Andhra Pradesh) gas project will go on stream around mid-2004.

The cost of development of the project may total $1.3 billion, it said.

Earlier, RIL had indicated gas reserves in the range of 7 trillion cubic feet (tcf), or 45 million standard cubic metres per day (mmscmpd), in its new discovery off the country's eastern coast.

However, later reports indicated that RIL's D-6 deepwater block in the KG basin may contain up to 15 tcf reserves of natural gas.

For the second quarter ended 30 September 2002, RIL registered a 25 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 1,002 crore (Rs 10.02 billion) on a 10 per cent increase in sales to Rs 16,206 crore (Rs 162.06 billion).

The petrochemicals business contributed 44.5 per cent of the merged entity's (Reliance Petroleum with RIL) Q2 sales and 55 per cent of operating profit. The refining business contributed 54 per cent to sales and 37 per cent to operating profit.