Union steel minister, Virbhadra Singh firm on steel capacity expansion

According to reports, the ministry of steel is not contemplating lowering its target for enhancing steel manufacturing capacity to 124 million tonnes from the current 55 million tonnes per annum.

Virbhadra Singh, union steel minister, said yesterday told PTI in an interview that the objective of building a production capacity of 124 million tonnes of steel by 2011-12 was not ambitious and was indeed practical, feasible and desirable.

In response to a question regarding the proposed expansion causing a glut in the market and eroding the bottomline of steel firms, he said he was hopeful of improvement of the economic conditions and revival of demand in the domestic market in addition to overseas markets.

Singh, said that recession could be taken as an opportunity, that could procure the services of global leaders in engineering and construction activities and economic prices to set up the targeted production capacity.

He added that the worldwide recession might even help the country in certain ways as people as engineering and construction firms who are otherwise busy would be available since expansion programmes are not taking place abroad due to recession.