Jharkhand is gearing up to set up ultra mega steel plant (UMSP) and searches for crucial land and desired raw materials are on at departmental level. It is learnt that capacity of the plant or club of plants would jointly go up to 36 million tonne per annum.
Information suggest that looking for suitable land and availability of iron ore and other raw material required for setting up the plants, teams of officials from Industry Department and Mecon have visited areas in Seraikela and Chaibasa districts.
“Mecon has been appointed consultant of the project. Some sites have been visited by the team in Seraikela and Chaibasa districts which have rich iron ore reserves. The members of the teams have had detailed consultations with the DCs. But anything would be decided finally based on availability of land for the plants and other raw materials,” Industry Director K Ravi Kumar told The Pioneer on Wednesday.
The endeavour is in the sync with the Centre’s decision to set up UMSP of 12 million tonne per annum capacity in the State and a special purpose vehicle (SPV) with National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) would be formed to implement the project. Main task of the SPV would be land acquisition with Jharkhand Government as one of the partners along with the Ministry of Steel.
Moreover, going a step ahead, the State Government is instead mulling to setup couple of more steel plants in the area adding 36 MTPA into the existing production capacity. “The plan is to produce 36 million tonne steel on yearly basis and for that 2-3 steel plants may come up depending on the prerequisites available,” added the Industry Director.
Aiming to mark a quantum jump in the steel production capacity in the county and to bridge the widening demand-supply gap of the metal, the Steel Ministry had green signaled setting up these UMSPs.
NMDC had evinced interest to set up UMSPs in four mineral rich states such as Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka while a Steel Finance Corporation (SFC) to finance the projects on a fast-track basis has also been proposed with an initial corpus of Rs1,500 crore. The Centre has set an ambitious domestic steel output of 300 MTPA by 2025 and major contribution into this is going to come from the states like Jharkhand.
“The State can play a facilitator into all this and would chip in with necessary clearances such as land, water etc. later, Jharkhand State Mineral Development Corporation (JSMDC) would also be roped in,” said a senior official of the Department and added that soon a tripartite memorandum of
understanding (MoU) would be inked figuring NMDC, State Government and Steel Ministry.
Notably, Chief Minister Raghubar Das had last week hinted about setting up three steel plants in the iron ore rich districts of the State that is making itself ready to contribute its bit in meeting the ambitious goal of iron and steel production in the country.