VISAKHAPATNAM: Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd, the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), has set new milestones in the sales turnover and net profit at a time when the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs decided to privatise the plant, which is being strongly opposed by employees as well as political parties of the State. The VSP has achieved a net profit of Rs 740 crore in the last four months.
RINL CMD PK Rath on Thursday said the VSP achieved a record sales turnover of around Rs 18,000 crore, the second-highest since its inception, in the just concluded 2020-21 financial year, registering an impressive growth of 13 per cent. Its sales volumes reached 4.45 million tonnes recording a growth of 4 per cent. In March 2021, the VSP achieved a sales turnover of Rs 3,300 crore and sales volume of 7,11,000 tonnes for the first time in its history. “This sales turnover is a whopping 42 per cent more than the previous best of Rs 2,329 crore in March 2019,” the CMD said.
Addressing the RINL senior officers in a virtual meeting, the CMD highlighted the stupendous performance achieved by VSP in all areas of operations. He stated that this has been possible due to record levels of production being achieved since December 2020. He complimented the VSP workforce for achieving the best ever production figures exceeding the capacity of 6.3 MTPA (Million Tonnes Per Annum).
“During the year, we achieved export sales of 1.3 million tonnes, which is 261 per cent higher than the previous year. In addition to this, 35 out of the total 57 ocean export contracts were finalised with 100 per cent advance payment terms. Having established such a good market for exports, there should not be any looking back,” he said.VSP union president J Ayodhya Ram said the plant has achieved a 13 per cent growth in turnover in the last fiscal compared to 2019-20. The VSP has achieved a turnover of Rs 17,917 crore in 2020-21.
In the last four months, the VSP has achieved a net profit of Rs 800 crore. The total profit included Rs 212 crore in December 2020, Rs 131 crore in January 2021, Rs 165 crore in February and over Rs 300 crore in March,” he said, adding that they will achieve Rs 2,500 crore profit a year if captive mines are allotted to the VSP. The VSP can earn profits if the full production capacity is achieved despite high production cost due to lack of captive iron ore mines. The plant has paid over Rs 2,000 crore as GST at the rate of 18 per cent on Rs 17,917 crore sales turnover, he said.
Stating that the VSP employees strived to achieve the best performance even during the pandemic, Ayodhya Ram felt that the plant would have achieved zero losses had there been no Covid impact. “The VSP is a golden goose, but the Centre has decided to privatise it,’’ he said.
