Steel PSUs must perform and compete with pvt players: Steel Min

The Dollar Business Bureau 

State-owned steel firms are not holy cows and these public sector undertakings (PSUs) should have to come out from their comfort zone in order to perform and to compete with the private players, said Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh.

“I have told my PSUs, especially those that produce steel, that there is a new environment where PSU is not a holy cow. You should perform and compete with your private players,” he said in an interview to PTI on Friday.

The steel minister has warned that these PSUs can’t afford to just sit on their glories in this changing world scenario.

“So, either perform or perish,” he said, in a blunt message.

Singh suggested that the state-run organisations should expand their activities and aim for high-end steel output.

“Diversify your activities, go for high-end steel production and also diversify into those activities where you can make best use of your land which is available to you. There is about one lakh acre of land with steel plants of our PSUs,” he said.

According to official sources, Singh was referring to SAIL, which barely achieves its blast furnace capacity of 1.7 tonnes per cubic metre (tpcm) per day as compared to the 2.5 tpcm per day capacity achieved by the private players and world standard of more than 3 tpcm per day.

Earlier, the minister had also rapped SAIL for its slow growth in modernisation and capacity augmentation as the deadlines were not met.

The government has already set up a committee for providing suggestive measures to speed up the modernisation process of steel public sector companies RINL and SAIL. The committee is headed by steel secretary and has Chairman and Managing Directors of RINL and SAIL as its members.

Besides other experts, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading management consultancy, is also a part of the committee. Till February 2017, SAIL has spent Rs.64,986 crore towards expansion and modernisation, mines and other related schemes.