India’s Ministry of Steel in collaboration with various state governments has sorted out issues of land availabilities for Greenfield steel plants, a ministry official said on Monday, April 23.
“Learning from the past, land bank issues have been taken care of now and if anyone wants to set up large steel mills in the country, we will lay out the red carpet,” Aruna Sharma, Secretary, Ministry of Steel said.
“No foreign steel company has yet applied to set up projects in the country but such companies are watching the market as there is good scope for setting up such projects now,” she added.
While global majors like Posco, ArcelorMittal and Thyssenkrupp have invested in India but most of these projects were for production of value added steel products like auto grade steel and cold rolled grain oriented steel and not integrated steel mills which require much largest tracts of land.
Meanwhile, ministry officials said that Indian crude steel production by end 2018 was expected to touch the 140 million mt per year mark, up from crude steel production of 101 million mt in 2017.