Burn Standard revival plant may be modified

Working on the revival package for Kolkata based Burn Standard & Company Ltd, which is under the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR), the Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises(BRPSE) may ask the Railway ministry and the Steel Authority of India(SAIL) to take over its two wagon manufacturing units and one refractory unit respectively.

Nitish Sengupta, chairman of the BRPSE, who met Burn Standard officials here today, said that the board will now see if there was any legal snag that could stall the process of a take-over of the units.

Burn Standard owned two wagon manufacturing facilities, one at Howrah and another at Burnpur in Burdwan district of West Bengal.

Its refractory unit was located at Salem, Tamil Nadu.

SAIL's Salem plant is undergoing a Rs1902 crore expansion and modernisation project started in September this year that will make it a fully integrated steel plant with a capacity to produce 180,000 tons per annum (tpa) of stainless steel slabs.

"The interest amount on the loans taken by Burn Standard is very high. It could be to the tune of Rs150 crore", Sengupta said.

"We do not want to shut down or give grants to sick PSEs. Instead, companies should either look at tying up with a private partner or listing at the bourses wherever possible. As a matter of fact, all PSEs should be listed in the stock exchanges", he added.