Steel Ministry not in a hurry to launch SAIL FPO

The Steel Ministry today said it is not in a hurry to launch the follow-on public offer (FPO) of Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and has not fixed any time frame for that as well.

"The SAIL FPO has been postponed as the market was down. We cannot forecast when this will improve and when the offer will hit the market," Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma said here.

"We are not in a hurry to launch the FPO. The urgency, if any, is of the Finance Ministry and not ours," he added.

The FPO was slated to hit the market by the middle of February. However, it got delayed due to some issues with book running lead managers (BRLMs) and subsequently sharp decline in the stock market.

The delay in FPO has also affected government's share sale programme for the current fiscal. Compared to targeted Rs 40,000 crore fund generation programme through disinvestment in the state-owned firms, it raised just above Rs 22,000 crore so far.

SAIL Chairman CS Verma, in February, had said the FPO could hit the market early next fiscal.

Commenting on the steel prices, the minister said since the export duty on iron ore has been increased, the price of ore would come down and as a result, the price of steel would also come down in the domestic market.

The government raised export duty on fines fourfold to 20% in the Budget 2011-12. The country had shipped over 100 million tonne of iron ore in 2009-10 and 70-80% of that was in the form of fines.

For lumps, the duty has been upped to 20% from 15% earlier.