By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: The Union Steel Ministry led by Dharmendra Pradhan is reported to have suggested the Ministry of Mines led by Prahlad Joshi to reduce royalty on Iron Ore fines from the existing 15% to 5% in order to incentivise beneficiation and pelletisation as well as reduce the stockpile of low-grade fines dumped at mine heads.
Steel Authority of India Ltd is given permission to sell 70 million tonnes of low-grade fines lying at its mines. The company was also allowed to sell 25 per cent of the total fresh quantity mined from its captive mines. SAIL has over 20 captive mines spread across Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, sources in Steel Ministry said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Union Steel Ministry in its Annual Report for Financial Year 2019-20 said “A disruption in supply of 45-50 million tonnes iron ore is expected in 2020-21 owing to the expiry of about 37 working merchant mines (250+ mines in total) on March 31, 2020. The Ministry of Steel along with the Ministry of Mines has worked out a strategy to mitigate the likely shortfall.”
On supply of coking coal, the ministry said an attempt is being made to diversify the coking coal import sources by importing the fuel from countries like Russia and Mongolia. The total import of coking coal in the country is about 56 million tonnes annually.
The ministry estimated its cost at about Rs 72,000 crore. Out of 56 MT, about 45 MT is imported from Australia alone, while the remaining quantity is imported from South Africa, Canada and the USA. The ministry is in talks with Russia and Mongolia for supply of coking coal.
This will provide India more options to source coking coal. Meanwhile, SAIL has been granted renewal of its Tasra coking coal mine by the government of Jharkhand in November 2019.
Request has also been made to the Ministry of Coal to consider granting long term linkage of raw coking coal to SAIL from Kalyaneshwari coking coal block allocated to BCCL (Bharat Coking Coal Limited), a Coal India subsidiary.
This coking coal shall be washed at SAIL’s Chasnalla washery in Jharkhand. “Ministry of Coal has also agreed to allocate through the reservation route, Rabodih and Rohne coking coal blocks to RINL and NMDC, respectively, for which these CPSEs shall be setting up washeries with 2.5 MTPA and 2.24 MTPA capacity, respectively,” it said.
