SAIL lines up Rs 6,000 cr capex for FY17

Country’s largest steel maker SAIL will spend around Rs 6,000 crore this fiscal on various modernisation and expansion programmes as well as on research and development (R&D) initiatives. In 2015-16, the public sector undertaking (PSU) had spent Rs 4,483 crore as capital expenditure.

“SAIL will spend around Rs 6,000 crore as capex this financial year. This includes the expansion programme as well as R&D spend,” a source said.

The money will go to energy saving methods, enrich product mix, pollution control, developing mines and collieries to meet higher requirement of key inputs and to introduce customer centric processes, the source added.

The Maharatna company is in the process of enhancing hot metal production capacity from 13.82 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to 23.46 MTPA under its expansion and modernisation programme with an investment of Rs 61,870 crore, which is expected to be completed this fiscal.

The programme is being undertaken at the SAIL’s facilities in Bhilai, Bokaro, Rourkela, Durgapur and Burnpur as well as the special steel plant at Salem. The PSU has further plans to take up capacity to 50 MTPA by 2025.

Besides, the steel maker will spend over Rs 10,200 crore on developing mines in Jharkhand and Odisha.

Last month in a meeting of Parliamentary Consultative Committee of Steel and Mines Ministry, Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar asked domestic companies, including SAIL, to accept the “external realities” facing the sector and “learn to compete” in the long-term.

“... in the long term, industry has to accept external realities and learn to compete and emerge stronger in spite of them (challenges). Time is of essence and all plans and actions by the companies must be well-planned and executed,” he had told the companies.