The Hindu : Business : India ranks 5th in steel production

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 08, 2007
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India ranks 5th in steel production

Special Correspondent

Panel reviews performance of the sector
SAIL to raise capacity to 60 mt by 2020

NEW DELHI: India is emerging as one of the predominant producers and consumers of steel in the world.

With a significant rate of growth in the steel sector, the country has recently emerged as fifth largest producer of crude steel globally, two notches above its seventh rank in 2006.

This was stated on Wednesday by Minister of Steel and Chemicals and Fertilisers Ram Vilas Paswan while addressing a press conference at Chandigarh followed by a meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee to review the steel sector’s performance.

Underlining the public sector’s role in the rapid expansion of steel, Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan said the Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL) and the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd. (RINL) were in the process of implementing their ambitious expansion and modernisation programmes.

The SAIL’s ongoing expansion programme, the Union Minister said, aimed at increasing the production capacity from the current 14.6 million tonnes of hot metal to around 26 million tonnes by 2010 at an estimated cost of Rs. 53,000 crore.

The Steel Authority of India was also planning to further expand its annual capacity to 60 million tonnes by 2020, Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan said.

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