India’s Ministry of Steel is considering laying down operational and productivity benchmarks for government owned and managed steel mills, a senior Indian government official said on Tuesday, February 21.
The government official said that a performance review of government steel companies earlier in the month has showed that these steel producers are lagging behind in operational efficiencies and productivity levels, not only compared to global standards but also compared to levels achieved by domestic private steel producers.
According to the official, the blast furnace productivity of the global steel companies averages around 3 mt per cubic meter per day. In comparison, the blast furnace productivity of Indian domestic steel producers averages around 2.5 mt per cubic meter per day, but the blast furnace productivity of domestic government steel companies stands at a lower average of 1.7 mt per cubic meter per day.
It is against such a specific backdrop that government steel companies like Steel Authority of India Limited and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited need to improve their productivity levels and benchmarks will ensure that these companies have specific targets to achieve, the official stated.
The proposal to lay down the benchmarks follows a review conducted by the Minister of Steel last week, wherein strictures were passed against government steel producers, with the minister reportedly saying that these companies “need to perform or perish and non-performance and inefficiencies are not acceptable.”