— PHOTO: SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY

WHEELS OF CHANGE: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (centre), with Union Minister for Steel, Ram Vilas Paswan (left), Minister of State for Steel, Akhilesh Das (second from right), and Chairman, CII National Committee on Steel & Non-Ferrous Metals, and Managing Director, Tata Steel, B. Muthuraman, at the Steel Summit in New Delhi on Monday.

NEW DELHI: Assuring the steel industry of the Centre's assistance to meet the surge in domestic demand, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday asked the Indian steel tycoons to capitalise on the opportunities at home before setting their eyes on global expansions.

Inaugurating a two-day `Steel Summit' organised here by the Steel Ministry and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Dr Singh advised the Mittals and the Tatas and others, who are eyeing global opportunities, to invest more at home. "India is a land of opportunity. Do not miss the moment," he said.

India, Dr Singh said, was poised to witness a massive investment surge in infrastructure development. This, he said, would immensely benefit the steel industry as bulk of the demand for the commodity emanated from the construction sector, which, as a rule of thumb, accounted for 50 per cent of all investments. "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 said.

Hailing the domestic steel industry's growing self-confidence, which was clear from its increased global presence, the Prime Minister invited the indigenous producers to invest in capacity expansions at home and said, "the Government will do whatever is necessary to ensure that our industry is able to meet the growing demand of steel".

In this regard, Dr Singh admitted that there were still some hurdles that investors face in doing business in India and noted that it was the sincere desire of the Government to help them overcome these problems.

Steel manufacturing in the country, Dr Singh said, was globally competitive and yet another evidence of the growing maturity of Indian steel companies was their efforts to acquire mines abroad for assured input linkages. "While I commend our business leaders for their global vision and reach, I urge them to pay equal attention to market opportunities at home," he said.

Projecting a bright future for the sector, Dr Singh said that both production and consumption of steel during the last five years had shown a sustained growth of over nine per cent which was "creditable''. The National Steel Policy, which sought to address the structural constraints on growth, had set a capacity target of 110 million tonnes by 2020. "This may well be surpassed before that date,'' he said.

The domestic steel industry, Dr Singh said, had experienced a period of restructuring along with a thorough overhaul of the policy regime. This helped India in improving its global ranking to seventh from ninth among steel producers. "Yet compared to global average per capita consumption of 150 kg, our per capita consumption of steel is still a mere 39 kg. Even by Asian standards, we have [a] long way to go in the consumption of steel,'' he said.

Addressing the gathering, Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said steel consumption in the country was growing at over 10 per cent and the trend was expected to continue.

India, he said, would emerge as the second largest steel producer in the world by 2020 with a production capacity of nearly 200 million tonnes.

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