India Steel Market Watch
November 30: The government of India needs to formulate a clear-cut strategy and action plans to ensure sufficient availability of manganese, chrome ore and ferro alloys for the steel industry on a sustainable basis, president of the Federation of Indian Minerals Industries (FIMI), H Noor Ahmed, has said.
Ahmed, who was speaking at FIMI’s ‘Manganese/Chrome Ores and Ferro Alloys Summit ‘ in Kolkata on November 30, indicated that the government’s ambitious plan to achieve 300 million tons of crude steel production by the year 2025 might get jeopardise if enough manganese, chrome ore and ferro alloys is not made available.
There is already an indication that steel producers may not get enough of these important raw material if policies are not formulated, industry sources said.
“Due to lopsided policies, despite being self-sufficient in manganese ore and chrome ore, the domestic industry was compelled to import significant quantities of around 3.17 million tons of manganese ore and around 0.24 mt chrome ore in 2014-15,” he stressed.
Sustainable and secure supply of raw materials for core infrastructure industry like steel is a significant and critical issue for the growth of the economy of any mineral resource rich country, he said.
“As such there is a need to have comprehensive understanding of the consumption of mineral resources from the perspective of the manufacturing sector and secure supply of raw material and competitive technology to extract maximum value out of resources,” the FIMI president said.
Ahmed said India is fortunate to have been endowed with huge resources of manganese (584 mt) and chrome ore (322 mt) as on January 1, 2013.
“However, it is paradoxical that despite having such rich resources, instead of required growth in production, there has been continual decline in production of these ores during the last five years,” he said, adding, “The production of manganese ore has come down to 2.17 mt in 2014-15 from a level of 3.06 mt in 2010-11 while production of chrome ore has declined to 1.68 mt from 4.33 mtpa in 2010-11.”
He pointed out that the ferro alloy industry in India has never been globally competitive despite its rich ore deposit and low cost manpower as high cost of electricity, non-availability of low-phos cooking coal and high cost of its imports and increasing cost of ore are the main deterrents.
“The situation is further accentuated by the skewed policy of the government,” Ahmed said.
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