SAIL, RINL line up Rs50,000 crore investment to double production

23 Apr 2007

Mumbai: The Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL), will pump in Rs50,000 crore to expand operations and cater to domestic demand, reports quoting steel secretary R S Pandey said.

By 2010 these two companies will invest Rs50,000 crore, Pandey said. The two PSUs will focus on growing within the country to meet the demand here, he added.

SAIL, has a production capacity of about 13-million tonnes and by 2010 it plans to produce 23-million tonnes. RINL will double its capacity from 4-million tonnes currently during the same period, he said.

At a time when private steel producers are acquiring companies overseas, two government-owned units, SAIL and RINL, have lined up whopping investments of over Rs50,000 crore to expand within the country to cater domestic demand.

Essar Global last week announced it would buy two companies abroad for more than Rs7,300 crore.

Tatas recently acquired Anglo-Dutch steel company Corus for over $12 billion and added new acquisitions since then.

Pandey had earlier said India would emerge as the second largest steel producer in the world by 2015-16 with an estimated production capacity of 120 million tonnes by then and 180 million tonnes by 2019-20.

Pandey said the consumption level in India is still very low at about 38 kg and there is lot of scope for further increase in the demand. He said the government had made an assessment of the demand-supply scenario to avoid a glut situation in the medium to long term.