India to Become Second Largest Steel Producer
By Commodity Online
15 Nov 2007 at 08:18 AM GMT-05:00
resourceinvestor.com
NEW DELHI (CommodityOnline.com) -- India will become the second largest producer of steel in the world by 2015-16, said the government on Wednesday.
India’s Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan told a conference of economic editors here that the steel the sector in the county is likely to witness an investment of Rs 8,70,640 crore ($22.2 billion) by 2020.
"During 2006, India emerged as the fifth largest crude steel producing country in the world and is set to become the second largest global steel producer before 2015-16," Paswan said.
He said going by the estimate of Rs 4,000 crore ($102 million) investment per million tonnes of additional capacity, the steel sector is likely to witness an investment of Rs 2,76,880 crore ($7 billion) by 2012 and Rs 8,70,640 crore ($22.2 billion) by 2020.
As per provisional figures Paswan presented, crude steel output witnessed a 9.8% annual growth to 50.88 million tonnes in 2006-07. Total capacity increased to 56.84 million tonnes last fiscal, while the utilisation was 89%.
Saying that India's steel production will be nearly 124 million tonnes by 2012, Paswan said the country is likely to achieve an annual capacity of around 275 million tonnes by 2019-20.
The sector has emerged as a key investment destination for multinational steel giants like Mittal Steel and Posco, which have promised combined investment of more than Rs 1,30,000 crore ($3.3 billion).
Domestic steel utilities have announced massive capacity expansions. SAIL [NSE:SAIL] and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL) [NSE:RCF] are executing corporate plans to increase their respective capacity to more than 24 million tonnes and 6 million tonnes by 2011-12.
Private firms Tata Steel [NSE:TATASTEEL], Essar Steel [NSE:ESTL] and JSW [NSE:JSWSTEEL] would raise their capacity to 13 million tonnes, 14.5 million tonnes and 11 million tonnes respectively.
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