The Hindu Business Line : Steel body to offer design, consultancy services

Kolkata, Sept. 12 The Institute for Steel Development & Growth (INSDAG) will soon embark upon project design and consultancy services on a commercial basis, according to Mr P.K. Bishnoi, the new President of INSDAG and Chairman & Managing Director of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd.

Speaking to Business Line here, Mr Bishnoi said the institute had people with technical skills and domain expertise to offer project design and consultancy services to the steel industry.

“Besides promoting steel, INSDAG will also be generating revenue for itself by doing this. It will be able to stand on its own feet.”

The institute has already embarked upon these services in a small way.

The idea now is to leapfrog to the next level and generate revenue for the organisation. In the current fiscal, INSDAG hopes to generate a revenue of around Rs 20 lakh from project design and consultancy services.

It will also continue to discharge its original mandate of promoting R&D and steel in the country.

Achieving financial self-sufficiency is important for the institute, which gets a grant of Rs 1.75 crore annually from the Steel Development Fund.

The annual establishment cost of the organisation has been pegged at Rs 2.4 crore.

Mr Bishnoi said the institute had taken upon itself the onus of promoting increased usage of steel in rural India.

The National Steel Policy has outlined that per capita steel consumption in rural India should go up from 2 kg at present to 4 kg by 2019-20.

To facilitate this, INSDAG has taken several initiatives including introduction of steel bullock carts in villages and facilitating increased usage of steel in rural housing and rural construction.

Steps are also being taken to facilitate an increase in the specific consumption of steel in the country.

“It would be important to increase steel consumption not just in the urban areas but rural areas as well,” Mr Bishnoi said, adding that more capacities need to be created in the steel sector.

“Today, the demand for steel in the country is more than the combined capacity of the integrated and secondary steel producers in India.”

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