Iron ore production more than domestic demand: Govt

NEW DELHI: The government on Thursday said the country produced enough iron ore to enable foreign steel giants like POSCO to set up mega projects in India even as the ore exports shot up by more than 17 million tonnes during the last fiscal.

"India is producing more iron ore than its domestic requirement at present. Setting up steel plants by companies like POSCO will encourage value-addition within the country," Minister of State for Steel Akhilesh Das told Lok Sabha in written reply to a query.

He said in its MoU with the Orissa government, Korean Steel giant POSCO had expressed its intention to swap iron ore having high alumina content with equal amount of low alumina for blending.

Citing data, the minister said the country produced 172.30 million tonnes of iron ore in the last fiscal against 155 MT in 2004-05 of which 93.79 MT were exported overseas, most of which were shipped to China.

China topped the list of countries importing ore from India (80.16 MT), followed by Japan (8.63 MT) and Europe (2.07 MT).

Meanwhile, in reply to a query Minister of State for Coal Dasari Narayana Rao said subsidiaries of Coal India Limited have failed to meet their production target by 6.020 MT in the first quarter of the current fiscal primarily due to heavy rainfall in the Eastern Coalfields Limited, Central Coalfields Limited and Bharat Coking Coal Limited, Rao said.

He said owing to this shortfall, the Coal Ministry has decided to mobilise all resources so that the shortfall was made good during the subsequent quarters of this fiscal.