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'Steel output likely to double by 2011-12'
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SME Times News Bureau | 24 May, 2010
India's steel production will double in the next two years even if Posco and ArcelorMittal projects, which have been stuck for over five years now, do not take off, Steel Minister Virbhadra Singh said on Sunday.
"At present, the steel production is 59.9 million tonnes. By 2011-12, it should increase to at least 120 million tonnes," Singh told a news agency in an interview.
Asked whether the ambitious target can be met even if the Rs 1.5 lakh-crore Posco and ArcelorMittal projects do not materialise by then, he said, "Yes, we have not taken those into account."
Singh stated the Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) has shown his personal keenness and the Steel Ministry has taken up the issue with the state governments concerned.
Posco has been delaying a Rs 52,000 crore ($12 billion) project in Orissa by more than five years due to protests by farmers who are agitating against giving up their fertile agricultural land.
Land acquisition hurdles had caused similar delays in ArcelorMittal's proposed steel plants in Jharkhand and Orissa. Later in November 2009, ArcelorMittal announced its intention to invest Rs 50,000 crore to open a 6 million tonnes per annum steel plant in Karnataka.
Singh said that besides several major producers like Jindal Steel, JSW, Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel and Tata Steel, many secondary steel producers were also implementing capacity-expansion projects.
The minister told the news agency that state-owned SAIL and RINL were also enhancing their existing plants at Bokaro, Bhilai, Durgapur and Visakhapatnam at an investment of Rs 80,000 crore.
SAIL and POSCO are having talks on forming a joint venture plant in Jharkhand or Maharashtra. Steel majors like ArcelorMittal and Tata Steel have also expressed interest in setting up JVs with SAIL, but the discussions were in the initial stages, SAIL chairman S.K. Roongta had recently said.
India's largest steel firm, SAIL, has planned to raise its production capacity from 14 million tonnes to 23 million tonnes.
The Steel Minister said that the government expected most of the expansion work to be completed by 2011-12. "It will increase the capacity in the public sector, which will be almost double (of present)," he told the news agency.
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