Govt plans to use excess land with PSUs for capacity addition

The Dollar Business Bureau

The government is planning to utilise surplus land available with public sector units (PSUs) by forging joint ventures (JV) with private players for setting up of new steel plants, which will also help the government to achieve its target of taking the steel production capacity of the country to 300 million tonnes by 2030. 

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday has approved the New Steel Policy (NSP) 2017 that is aimed at achieving the country’s steel production capacity to 300 million tonnes by 2030 with an additional Rs.10 lakh crore investment. Currently, the steel production capacity of the country is 126 million tonnes.

“A new policy for steel industry has been approved after 12 years that will give a huge boost to the sector and help it to become globally competitive,” said Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh while briefing to reporters. 

He stated that under the new law, acquiring land is an issue, and added, “The government plans to utilise the surplus land of steel PSUs to set up new plants in joint venture with private companies. If we have to create steel-making capacity of 300 million tonnes, we cannot wait for long time.”

For making best utilisation of land, Singh is also in favour of the vertical development. 

The Minister said that in future capacity addition, the share of private firms and PSUs is likely to remain at the current level. Currently, the PSUs have a contribution of 19% to the total production capacity of the country. 

Briefing on the development, Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma said that the steel ministry is working out a way to use the excess land available with PSUs for setting up steel-making clusters as a JV with private companies, including foreign firms. 

“These will be clean land available to them (private companies),” Sharma said, while adding that the PSUs can contribute such land as equity in ventures.