By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister of Steel-PNG Dharmendra Pradhan in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday in a written reply said that the total number of steel based industries in the country in 2018-19 stood at 1217.
The production of iron ore in the country is sufficient to meet the current demand/consumption by domestic steel industry. However, the entire demand of coking coal is not met from the domestic production as the supply of coking coal in the country is limited and thus no option is left but to resort to import of coking coal.
The supply of iron ore during last year i.e. 2018-19 was 207.7 MT against its demand of 189 MT. During 2018-19 the total demand of coking coal for steel industry was 58.37 MT. Out of this 51.83 MT (excluding PCI & Anthracite Coal) were met through imports and 1.6 MT was provided by Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) and Coal India Limited (CIL) and remaining was catered by Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and TATA Steel.
