Comments
SAIL's proposed consortium to bid for Hajigak mines in Afghanistan would comprise half-a-dozen other big players, including public sector RINL and NMDC.
“We are in the process of choosing private sector partners and would like to take only three to four big companies,” said the SAIL Chairman, Mr C.S. Verma. This is apart from the three Government-owned firms SAIL, RINL and NMDC, he said.
SAIL is in the process of documenting the memorandum of understanding with proposed partners. “We expect to have MoU with the consortium partners in two weeks,” he added.
The Hajigak iron ore deposits are located in Bamiyan province, some 130 km west of Kabul, and are estimated to contain 1.8 billion tonnes of haematite reserves. SAIL and 15 other Indian firms had been shortlisted by the Afghan Government to bid for the iron ore reserves.
Besides trying to forge a consortium, SAIL is also contemplating setting up 3 million tonne per annum (mtpa) plant in Afghanistan, Mr Verma said.
“We may rope in a partner, but the plans are in very initial stages,” he added.
Afghanistan currently imports some 3-4 mtpa and SAIL proposes to tap the market that exists in the landlocked country. An overseas plant of 3 mtpa would require an investment of $3 billion, Mr Verma said.
“We will decide on investments after we decide on the partner,” he added.
No Price Hike
While private companies such as JSW Steel and Essar Steel have raised prices to offset the high input costs, SAIL said there are no such immediate plans for the company.
“There is no case to hike prices at present,” Mr Verma said. The company had last hiked its prices in March, driven by the high cost of coking coal.
Since then, the coking coal prices have eased a bit. The company had contracted a price of $330 per tonne for the April-June quarter. SAIL plans to finalise the coking coal contracts for the July-September quarter in the third week of June and expects the prices to be less than $330 per tonne, Mr Verma said.
With the situation returning to normalcy in Australia and lower demand from Japan, the coking coal prices have to come down further, Mr Verma said.
On the rising interest costs, Mr Verma said the off-take of steel products is unlikely to be affected. With the economy projected to grow at 8-9 per cent, the demand for steel in India is expected to be 13.3 per cent in the current year, according to the World Steel Association.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.