Posco keen on Bengal model

The South Korean steel major Posco, which proposes to set up a 12 million ton, Rs 51,000 crore steel plant at Paradip in Orissa, has favoured the West Bengal pattern of strong state backing for project implementation.

"The Left Front government is pushing through various projects in West Bengal. We need to learn from them", Dr. Chang-ho-Kwag, Director, Posco Research Institute said.

Presenting a paper in the international steel conference on steel in Orissa, Kwag said, though the Orissa government has signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 46 steel companies, 26 small and medium scale projects have started partial production.

However, most of mega projects are not making any headway, he rued.

Many mega projects, including that of Posco, are mired in land acquisition and displacement problems.

"To expedite the project implementation, one stop mechanism for mega projects may be put into the place by the state government", Kwag said, adding, "They (meaning the Orissa government) need to turn MoUs into reality".

Apart from accelerating the development of physical infrastructure in the form of roads, ports and other related infrastructure, the state government will have to develop social infrastructure as well.

Educating the people about the benefits of the projects is very important for materialisation of the projects, he observed.

Stating that Orissa is a lucky state to have plenty of natural resources and long coast line, Kwag said, the demand for coking coal import is likely to grow at a faster rate from the eastern states as a number of steel majors are setting up their plants in this part of the country.

As Orissa has a long coast line, it is likely to see a huge surge in coal imports for upcoming industries.

He said, the company expects the crude steel production capacity of India to go up to 275 million tonne by 2020 if all the projects in the pipeline go on steam.

Most of the capacity addition during this period will be in the eastern states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhatishgarh and West Bengal, he said.

The company plans to start the preparatory work for actual construction of the plant in coming October.

However, it faces difficulties due to delay in grant of prospecting license (PL) and land acquisition for its project.