Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma today asked NMDC to expedite expansion plans as the state- owned iron ore miner reported about 23% dip in both production and sales for the July-September quarter.
Verma, who took the company's review meeting for the first half of this fiscal, said that all expansion plans of NMDC are behind schedule.
"It's all delayed," he said and asked the company to expedite the expansion work to meet the targeted schedule.
Hit hard by heavy rains and evacuation related issues during the quarter, NMDC's production was down by over 23% at 53.77 lakh tonne (LT), while sales declined by 22.75% to 58.54 LT.
For the first half of this fiscal, NMDC's iron ore production was down nearly 7% at 12.24 million tonne.
"Basic reason is that there has been unprecedented heavy rainfall in Bailadila region (in Chhattisgarh) compared to last year, and then there have been issues related to evacuation of iron," NMDC acting Chairman C S Verma said after the review.
He said that NMDC may produce about 27 million tonne iron ore in the current fiscal, almost the same as in 2011-12.
On iron ore prices, he said that they have increased by about 10% in the last one month but declined to comment whether they would rise again next month.
Meanwhile, the Steel Minister said the government has rejected the name of M S Rana as chairman of NMDC and a new search committee will be constituted by the appointments committee of the Cabinet.
The miner is without a full time chairman since the retirement of Rana Som in December last year and has seen two acting chairmen (including Verma) since then.
"The earlier panel has been scrapped. Vigilance clearance (for Rana) did not come for about a year... There will be a new search committee," Verma said.
The Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) had selected Rana, currently chairman of Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India, last year to head NMDC.
Verma also played down iron ore imports by some steelmakers, saying that it is "minimal at 0.6 million tonne during April-September".