The Hindu Business Line : NMDC going solo on Chhattisgarh steel project

Steel plans
RINL will continue to provide technical support to NMDC in project management and construction related activities.
MECON preparing techno-economic feasibility report for the proposed plant.

Ambarish Mukherjee

New Delhi, April 25 The National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) plans to set up a 3-million-tonne a year steel plant on its own in Chhattisgarh. Its joint venture partner, Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), is no longer involved with the project.

In August 2007, NMDC, SAIL and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL) had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to set up 4-million-tonne integrated steel plant in Chhattisgarh through a joint venture company. This MoU will now be scrapped and NMDC will go it alone for the project whose capacity has also been revised.

Confirming the parting of ways, a SAIL spokesman said, “NMDC will go and build the plant on its own. As far as we are concerned, we have our ambitious expansion plans lined up in all our plants for the next three years. We will continue to focus on them.”

However, RINL will remain linked to the project to provide technical support to NMDC in the areas of project management and construction related activities. The MoU was signed in August 2007 amidst much fanfare. It had been decided that all the three companies would have equal equity participation.

Earlier, SAIL had taken the lead for having the pre-feasibility and feasibility reports prepared for the proposed joint venture.

NMDC has identified land near Dilmilli village in Bastar district in Chhattisgarh and currently public sector MECON is preparing the techno-economic feasibility report for the proposed plant.

The new plant, with a reduced capacity of 3 million tonne, (instead of earlier 4 million tonne) would be set up subject to the availability of land from the State Government and also on the availability of linkages for key raw materials, water and power, official sources said.

According to sources, the joint venture company plan was dropped as some mining leases owned by NMDC would have had to be transferred to the new company. This would have involved lengthy procedures.

According to the sources, the move to scrap the joint venture plan is supported by the Ministry of Steel. Since both SAIL and RINL have been asked to squeeze in their five-year expansion plans into three years, it was felt that they should focus more on this aspect.

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MoU signed for steel plant in Chhattisgarh

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