“With a production of 46.77 million tonne crude steel during the January-October 2009 period, the country has emerged as the fourth largest steel producer in the world and is expected to become the second largest producer in the world by 2015,” steel ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The country is likely to achieve a crude steel production capacity of 124 mt by 2012, it said. The ministry also said as many as 222 memoranda of understanding have been signed with various states, mostly Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal. These projects would create an additional capacity of 276 mt.
The statement said going by the existing growth trends, the National Steel Policy estimates of an annual steel consumption growth of seven per cent, based on a GDP growth rate of 7-7.5 per cent and a 110-mt crude steel production by 2019-20, are likely to be exceeded.
“In the next five years, demand will grow at a higher annual average rate of over 10 per cent compared to around seven per cent growth achieved between 1991-92 and 2005-06,” the statement said.
Finished steel production was at 38.96mt during April-November of this fiscal as against 38.02 mt in the corresponding period of 2007-08, a growth of 2.5 per cent.
Finished steel export was at 1.81 mt during the April-November period as against 2.952 mt in the corresponding period last fiscal while import of finished steel was at 4.59 mt during the reporting period as against 4.134 mt in corresponding period of 2007-08, a growth of 11 per cent. Consumption of total finished steel was at 34.304 MT during April-November, 2009 as against 33.995 MT in corresponding period of 2007-08.
Challenging milieu
Meanwhile, in Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), Tata Steel Managing Director H M Nerurkar, said the new year would be equally challenging as last year as the global recession is still continuing .
“The economy is still pulling out of recession. Last year was extremely challenging. Such crisis we had never witnessed in our career and it was worse than Great Depression,” Nerurkar said at a new year’s ceremony here. The recession could not affect India as badly as other developed nations in Europe for government’s initiatives and strong banking system in the country, he said.
Tata Steel Managing Director regretted that mineral-rich Jharkhand could not progress to its expectation due to political instability. “The new state government is expected to provide economic stability and bring the state back on the road to progress,” he said.
Nerurkar said the global economy was slowly picking up but the steel sector was not as booming as 2007.
Expressing satisfaction over the consumption of steel in India, he said, “The pressure on the prices would be there despite over-production.”
