KOLKATA: Steel secretary Binoy Kumar has said the steel ministry is actively working on reducing India's dependence on high-quality steel imports as well as imports of capital goods for steel manufacturing and coking coal.
Addressing the 56th National Metallurgists' Day and 72nd Annual Technical Meeting of the Indian Institute of Metals organised by Tata Steel and Indian Institute of Metals, here on Wednesday, Mr Kumar said the Centre's policy for preference to domestically manufactured iron and steel products had been a success, and it saved over Rs 12000 crores on the import bill, according to 2017 report.
He said domestic steel companies have been able to provide quality steel to government companies like GAIL, ONGC and the railways. "We don't want imports, we are increasingly learning to meet our own requirements.
We are confident that with the kind of support we are providing to the industry, we will be able to meet our target of achieving 300 million tons production capacity by 2030," he said.
Public enterprises that procure steel in large scale for Rs 50 crores or more were being asked to source their requirements from domestic steel producers, both public and private.
Further, the steel ministry was ensuring that Indian companies got into long-term arrangements with government enterprises that needed steel to ensure continued demand for Indian steel.
Mr. Kumar said the availability of coking coal and logistics posed a major challenge in achieving the 300 million tons target of manufacturing steel domestically in the next 10-12 years.
He said three Indian PSUs have been mining coking coal in Mozambique and the figures have risen from 1.2 million tonnes to 1.9 million tonnes.
For the first time ever, the ministry of coal has earmarked certain coal fields to be auctioned specifically to the steel sector, to ensure the security of raw material to the domestic companies, both private and public, he informed.