Government to speed up environmental clearance

A host of policy decisions like faster environmental clearnce and speeding-up of auctions would be taken by the Government soon to ensure revival of the steel sector of the country, Syedain Abbasi, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Steel said here on Saturday. “Close to 80 steps are being considered by Government and the PMO is directly involved in this,” he said.

He was speaking at the Steel Round Table: The Way Forward at the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. While terming shortage of raw materials as the main hurdle for the sector, Abbasi said that frequently changing environmental guidelines were unviable and these were hurting the industry.

“There is a guideline asking the industry to ensure zero percentage discharge which would put an added burden,” he noted. He added: “There is a huge demand of steel in the domestic market, yet the sector is being unabale to capitalise on it due to closure of iron-ore mines across the country.”Iron ore production in the country fell to 144mt in 2013-14 from 218 mt in 2008-09.

The Supreme Court on May 16. The closure of iron-ore mines after a direction of the Supreme Court has led to acute shortage of iron-ore in the country.

Expressing concern over the surge of iron-ore export, Abbasi said that if required the government would consider levying an export duty on iron-ore pellets to protect the domestic steel industry.

He added that the Commerce Ministry has been asked to revise the duty structure.

Despite the challenges, Abbasi said that he expected the steel manufacturing capacity to almost triple to 300 million tonnes by 2030.