Steel Authority of India ltd (SAIl), despite battling challenging market conditions in FY13 owing to demand stagnation, produced 13.4 million tonnes of crude steel by operating at 103 per cent of its capacity, making an improvement of 1 per cent over the corresponding period last year.
Chairman of the state-owned steel maker C S Verma on Thursday informed media persons while declaring the financial results of the Jan-March quarter of FY13 that during the fiscal, the company commissioned projects worth Rs 5,500 crore while its capex was Rs 9,731 crore.
The Maharatna company's net profit though went down by a stupendous 72 per cent to Rs 446.53 crore owing mainly due to a fall in net sales realisation (NSR), which Verma attributed to a spurt in steel imports in the last few months, going up to 7 million tonnes.
He further said that during the year 2012, growth in global steel production increased just 1.2 per cent and capacity utilisation was only 80 per cent. Domestically also, growth in crude steel production during 2012-13 was 2.1 per cent and consumption 3.3 per cent to 73.5 million tonnes, and all this reflected in the financials of the company.
Amid all this, Verma expressed hope that depressed market conditions would improve with recent measures by the Government to facilitate faster clearance of projects. In the current fiscal, SAIl would be adding 5 million tonnes of additional capacity and saleable steel production would go up to 15 million tonnes.
"2013-14 is going to be a landmark in SAIl's journey of nation-building, with new production capacities being added after a gap of around 15 years, when we take up our present capacity of 14 million tonnes to 19 million tonnes by the end of this fiscal," he said.