Ministry asks HEC to draw up modernisation scheme for Plan panel

The Union minister for heavy industries and public enterprises, Vilasrao Deshmukh, in a meeting with the functional directors of the state-owned Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) headed by its chairman and managing director G K Pillai asked it to draw a comprehensive plan for modernisation of its three plants in Ranchi in order to place it before the Planning Commission for a special package to the PsU considering its location in Jharkhand which is considered a backward state.

The minister said that the plants and machinery of HEC became outdated and required early replacement to compete with the domestic and foreign players.

He said HEC is one the largest integrated engineering complexes in the country having worthy infrastructure. It needs the assistance from the concerned ministries to get orders from railways, defence, nuclear and space research, Coal India, Steel Authority of India and others.

The minister said the net worth of the company became negative which created bottleneck in getting more work orders.

He said that the company had all the talent and capacity to achieve the status of a Nav Ratna company, but its negative net worth had stood in the way of its achievement.

The minister said that the negative net worth of HEC could be made positive if the pending dues of the company from the Jharkhand government was cleared. He had written to the state government to clear the dues of Rs 160 crore towards the cost of land and buildings taken over by the state government for setting up the state Assembly, secretariat and to provide quarters for the state government employees.

He said that the present management of HEC has been able to change the work culture and brought the company from loss to profit within last three years.