The Hindu Business Line : `Ensure quality steel at reasonable prices'

THE PRIME MINISTER, Dr Manmohan Singh, with the Minister for Chemicals & Fertilisers and Steel, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, at the Steel Summit 2007 `India vision 2020 - Challenges ahead' in the Capital on Monday. — Ramesh Sharma

New Delhi March 26 The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, today told the Indian steel industry that it is the industry's responsibility to ensure that good quality steel is available at reasonable prices.

Addressing the Steel Summit organised by the Ministry of Steel and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here today, the Prime Minister assured the industry that "the Government would do whatever is necessary to ensure that the industry is able to meet the growing demand for steel."

"It is your responsibility to ensure that good quality steel is available at reasonable prices," he said.

The Prime Minister also called upon Indian steel tycoons eyeing global opportunities to pay equal attention to the market opportunities within India.

Dr Singh said: "I want the Mittals and the Tatas and others who are eyeing global opportunities to also invest more at home."

The Prime Minister said that India is currently investing about 34 per cent of the country's gross national product and in all investment activities around 50 per cent of the investment happens to be construction activity.

"Construction is nothing else but steel and cement," he said adding that "consequently, there is bound to be a massive growth in demand for steel in the next few decades - perhaps to levels never visualised before."

He also pointed out that the increasing number of global steel majors who have announced plans to set up steel making facilities in India gives a fair indication of the comparative advantages of making steel in the country.

Bright future

Forecasting a bright future for the steel industry, he said during the last five years, production and consumption of steel has grown at over 9 per cent. Stating that while the Steel Policy set a target of 110 million tonnes of production capacity by 2020, he said, "this may well be surpassed before that date."

In order to achieve this, the Prime Minister said that "Energy saving must acquire a new meaning and content. Environment-friendly technologies must be given utmost scope for being operationalised."

CRONY CAPITALISM

The Prime Minister pointed out that "a comment has been made recently that most of our business leaders who have become billionaires seem to be operating in either relatively protected business environments, in oligopolistic or monopolistic markets or are dealing in scarce resources. If this observation is true then someone could say that we are promoting crony capitalism."

"That certainly should not be the case. The wheels of industry must move and move in all directions to enrich every region and every segment of our society," he said.

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