India’s Ministry of Steel will appoint consultants to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the domestic steel industry and to suggest measures to mitigate the slowdown in the industry, laying down specific milestones for the implementation of such measures, an official of the Joint Plant Committee (JPC) at the ministry has said.
The JPC has floated a request for proposals from leading consultancy firms, the official said.
The detailed mandate for the consultants would be to identify the current challenges faced by the domestic steel industry in the wake of the pandemic, for both integrated and secondary steel sectors, supply chain challenges and disruptions, the costs of raw materials and the pricing of finished products, the cost of labor and international trade dynamics, and suggest specific measures for each of these areas, the official added.
The Ministry of Steel for its part is also actively involved in creating an environment that would provide long-term small and medium-scale ancillary units linked to the steel industry.
India’s steel minister Dharmendra Pradhan has held meetings with his counterparts at the ministries of railways and road transport, and at the Institute of Steel Development and Growth (INSDAG) and state-run Steel Authority of India (SAIL), to discuss proposals for setting up clusters of steel fabrication units linked to various steel mills across the country.
For starters, the ministry will work out a detailed plan for setting up the first of such steel fabrication clusters around the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) of SAIL in the Durg district of Chhattisgarh state.