The country's 200 million tonnes steel-making capacity target by 2020 may see a shortfall of around 30 million tonnes in the absence of a "clear" policy on raw materials, Tata Steel today said.
"Our policy on raw material, particularly on iron ore, is not clear. Unless this happens, it is not going to enhance capacity. That's a major issue," Tata Steel Managing Director H M Nerurkar said here.
India, currently world's fourth largest steel maker, has around 90 million tonnes capacity. However, sensing demand to pick up, almost all the leading steel makers have been raising capacity, mainly through brown-field expansions.
Nerurkar said the target of having 200 million tonnes installed steel making capacity in the country appeared to be on track earlier, but now it seems to be a difficult one.
"The predictions of 2020 of 200 million tonnes earlier appeared to be absolutely on track. Now the way the greenfield projects in India are getting delayed, in a way the economy has not grown the way it was growing...200 million tonnes by 2020 appears to be difficult now," he said.
"The target appears tall. I personally feel it will be more towards 170 or like that. That is the way it looks," he said.
The government had earlier pegged India's steel making capacity at 200 million tonnes by 2020.
On Tata Steel's greenfield steel-making plant in Odisha's Kalinganagar, Nerurkar said the first phase of the project with three million tonnes per annum capacity could be started by the middle of 2014.
"The Odisha project, as I mentioned earlier, also going on smoothly and sometime in the middle of 2014 around June we could start the phase I," he said.