SAIL’s expansion project faces delay

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Coal and Steel expressed concern about the lack of progress in the production performance of the Steel Authority of India (SAIL).

During each of the last four years, the firm’s production remained stagnant around 14.5 mn t of hot metal, 13.6 mn t of crude steel, 12.8 mn t of saleable steel and 0.3 mn t of pig iron, the panel said in its report tabled in the Parliament.

The panel laid blame on the delay in implementation of its ongoing expansion and modernisation plan. The report points out that orders worth around Rs 58,000 crore have been placed against which actual expenditure of Rs 42,893 crore has been incurred till Feb 2013.

In order to avoid cost and time overrun, the committee asked the government or SAIL to expedite the modernisation and expansion plan and complete it during the current fiscal.

SAIL has been implementing modernisation and expansion plan of its five integrated steel plants at Bhilai, Bokaro, Rourkela, Durgapur and Burnpur and at the special steel plant in Salem to increase capacity of crude steel from 12.84 million tonnes per annum (mn tpa) to 21.4 mn tpa. Of this, expansion of Salem plant has been completed in 2010-11.

The report noted that owing to poor performance of the contractors, the completion of modernisation and expansion of Bhilai and Durgapur steel plants have been delayed, resulting in underutilisation of outlays.