Sesa Goa Limited, the mining arm of India’s Vedanta Resources, has sought fiscal incentives from the Indian government for low grade iron ore beneficiation in the forthcoming national budget 2026-27, to be placed before parliament on February 1, a company executive said on Thursday, January 29.
The company said that targeted policy support and infrastructure investment are critical to make the processing economically viable and to expand the sector.
The low-grade iron ore beneficiation process enhances the iron content of low-quality ores by removing impurities like silica, alumina and phosphorus, thereby making the ores suitable for steel production.
“India sits on massive low-grade iron ore inventory - estimated at over 300 million mt at mine heads - that remains underutilised due to high upfront costs for beneficiation plants and supporting infrastructure," said Sesa Goa CEO Navin Jaju.
"There is a very urgent need to bring some kind of beneficial duty structure or incentive structure to beneficiate this material,” he said. He added that, while the country produced an estimated 289 million mt of iron ore in 2024-25, aggregate existing beneficiation capacity was just 20 percent of this volume.