Steel ministry to discuss Huda committee report: Paswan

Mumbai, Aug 31 (UNI) The Union Minister for Chemicals, Fertilisers and Steel, Ramvilas Paswan, said that the steel ministry was meeting somewhere in New Delhi to discuss various aspects of the Huda committee report.

Talking to the media before the industry meet on 'India Chem 2006', which is slated to be held here on 8-10 November, the Minister told the mediapersons yesterday, that though the Huda committee has already submitted its report before the Steel Ministry, there were certain objections over the report within the ministry. Without divulging any further details about the contentious aspects of the report the Minister said that export continued to be the contentious subject in the report. Giving the example of China he said that even though being rich in iron ore she was not exporting the same.

Talking about the availability of iron ore in the country he said that though we have got a reserve of iron ore amounting to 22 billion ton, the quantity of high-grade iron ore was quite less.

Hence rather than exporting the high-grade iron ore we want to add value to them, he said. Paswan expressed his concern over the fact that 78 million ton (MT) out of 148 MT, which was being produced in the country annually, was being exported.

Enumerating the achievements made by the steel ministry since he assumed office in 200O, Paswan said that the steel prices have plummeted by nine per cent since then and hinted for more price cuts in future. ''I am quite sure the steel prices will be further reduced in days to come but the only problem being that steel sector was decontrolled in the country and it was very much getting affected by the variation of steel prices in the international market''.

The steel PSUs like SAIL (Steel Authority of India Ltd) and RINL (Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd) have been asked to go for capacity expansion so as to achieve the goal of production of 110 MT of steel by 2019 as envisaged by the National Steel Policy which was unveiled by the Steel Ministry few months ago.

Regarding the revival package for various state-owned pharma PSUs, the Minister said that we have decided to revive units like Hindustan Insecticides. All the demands that were put forward by the employees of the Bangalore-based Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd (HAL) in connection with its revival package have been accepted by the ministry, said Mr Paswan before leaving for Bangalore to attend a function of HAL there.

Other pharma PSUs likely to receive the revival packkage by the ministry include Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals and Bengal Chemicals, he said.

UNI KKD WD SKB2005