OREANDA-NEWS. July 23, 2015.  “Our Government is fully committed to address every problem and bottleneck of the ailing steel industry and achieve the target of production of 300 Million Tonne Per Annum (mtpa) by 2025. To attain this target, we have set up a Steel Research & Technology Mission of India (SRTMI) along with industry to promote collaborative research programmes in steel sector so as to enhance their competitiveness, quality, R&D and production capacities. SRTMI will be steel industry’s contribution to ‘Make in India, Made in India’ initiative”, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Steel & Mines aid while addressing senior industrialists and officials at two day Steel Mart organised by Confederation of Indian Industry CII in Chandigarh today.          

“To bring down costs of steel manufacturers, there is a need to bring down the interest rates, debt and transportation costs for steel industry. Proper rail connectivity of ports with raw material sites and steel plants, especially across north is highly imperative as well, to bring down the logistics costs and save time”, added the Minister.

There is a critical and urgent need to promote and spread awareness about more and more usage of steel, especially in rural areas so as to boost its demand and hence to save the steel industry. Presently India’s per capita usage is just 59 kg as compared to 700 kg of China and World average of 215 kg. Both industry and Govt need to work together to increase this demand, he added.

We understand that secondary steel producers are passing through a very tough phase and have some serious concerns. To address these, we have planned to meet both the small and large steel industry players in August and draw the roadmap for future by finding out common solutions, he further said.

We have also planned Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) with four iron ore rich states i.e Karnataka, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh and would soon set up plants to produce 3 mtpa of steel initially, which would touch 6mtpa very soon, adding 24 mtpa to the national production levels, he added.           

The modernisation of SAIL with an investment of Rs 70, 000 crore has been completed. This would enhance the production capacity to 23 mtpa from present levels of 13 mtpa by January 2016. We have planned to invest another Rs 125 lakh crore for next phase of expansion to achieve the target of 50 mtpa from SAIL alone. Further, SAIL has entered into an MoU with Railways worth Rs 2000 crore for a 240 km rail link from Raipur to Jagdalpur, which is rich in iron ore, he informed.           

Shri Narendra Singh Tomar said that the Govt is aware that the steel industry is passing through a tough phase presently and assured Govt’s full support to safeguard steel industry’s interests.

Steel Mart 2015 organised by CII in Chandigarh endeavours to create a platform for both steel producers and consumers to interact and examine in detail the current and future dynamics of steel industry in India and to chalk out a focused action plan for aligning the interests of North India’s Steel industry viz-a-viz global markets. CII urged the Govt to speed up the infrastructure development projects, make steel corridors on the lines of freight corridors and earmark coal blocks for steel manufacturing in India so as to reduce dependence on imports.