Kenya seeks SAIL help for setting up steel plant

Kenya has evinced interest to set up an integrated steel plant in collaboration with state-run Steel Authority of India (SAIL), which can cater to the East African region.
In a recent letter to SAIL Chairman C S Verma, India's High Commissioner to Kenya Yogeshwar Varma has said that local government has sought SAIL's collaboration to set up either an integrated steel plant or a steel plant in Kenya.
The African nation, which does not have any integrated steel plant so far, intends to set up the plant based on pig iron to be supplied by SAIL.
The idea of setting up a steel plant comes following the country finding a large base of iron ore and coal in the Kitui province, which is around 160 kilometers east of Nairobi.

Kitui is a also busy trading centre.
Varma has requested the Sail Chairman to send 3-4 senior officials to visit the country and assess the potential at the "expense of SAIL".

He has also written to Tata Group's Cyrus Mistry and Naveen Jindal of JSPL with the same proposal.
An official in SAIL said that the company receives such proposals from various countries, but a decision on investing in any particular country depends purely on its merits.
SAIL had in 2011 expressed intention to set up four steel mills in Mongolia, South Africa, Oman and Indonesia involving USD 12 billion investment. None have come up so far.