By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: The stocks of Iron Ore fines and as well as Calibrated Lumpy Ore (CLO) have gone up at various Mines owned by State run Odisha Mining Corporation because of the high floor price set by the State’s largest merchant mining firm.
The last three e-auctions conducted by OMC for iron ore fines and calibrated lumpy ore (CLO) have failed due to arbitrary and very high floor price being fixed by the State run firm without any logic. In the case of Daitari mines, there was a total failure by OMC as there was zero participation and the entire cargo remained unsold.
The entire quantity of 96,000 metric tonne(MT) of iron ore fines and 90,000 MT of CLO from Daitari mines remained unsold as a result of high floor price fixed by OMC. This has resulted into a sharp increase in OMC’s stock of iron ore fines and CLO at various mines including Daitari and also leading into a huge loss to State exchequer due to drop in despatch.
The Kalinga Nagar Industries Association (KNIA), All Odisha Steel Federation (AOSF) and several other industry bodies have suggested OMC to reduce the floor price of CLO to Rs 5,000 per MT and iron ore fines to Rs 3,500 per MT so that these units are viable. The international price of iron ore has collapsed by over Rs 6,000/- per MT (or USD 80 per MT). The total despatches of OMC have dropped from 21 lakh MT in June to only 11 lakh MT in July and 9 lakh MT in August which is less than 50% of its capacity. The lifting from Daitari mines in July was only 23,884 MT and in August it was only 20,000 MT as against normal lifting of 2.5 lakh tonnes per month.
Several companies like M/s Mesco Steel, Maithan Ispat and Neelachal Ispat Nigam Limited, Adhunik, MSP, Concast etc are already closed since long due to unreasonable pricing of iron ore.
