An Indian Parliament oversight committee has set state-owned iron ore miner NMDC Limited a deadline of October 2018 to complete construction of its three million mt per year greenfield steel mill in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, noting that the project has been delayed by 41 months, a government official said on Tuesday, March 20.
The official said that the parliamentary committee of the Ministry of Steel has placed before parliament a report on the steel project at Nagarnar, Chhattisgarh including the reasons provided by NMDC for the delay and including agreement by NMDC that a trial run will commence by the deadline set by the committee.
Initially, the mining company had targeted commissioning of the $2.76 billion steel mill for 2015 and, after continuous time overruns, even the last commissioning deadline of December 2017 was missed by NMDC, the parliamentary committee noted.
Significantly, the Indian government has approved a strategic disinvestment of equity in the Nagarnar steel project to a private investor but such a government disinvestment will only be followed through upon completion of the project to secure better valuation, the official added.