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| In another development in the race for take over of the 9.6 lakh tonne cement facility, the bid of Lafarge has been disqualified by the inter departmental core committee of the state government in charge of the disinvestments process. |
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| The disqualification is due to technical deficiencies in the bid on more than one count, which included submission of the bid without backing of the company board approval for the purpose. |
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| The government on the advice of the advocate general had given time to Lafarge to comply with the bid conditions. |
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| However, the company had failed to rectify the deficiencies by the deadline, pointed out sources and added that in the circumstances the committee has not taken the financial bid of the company into consideration. |
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| There were three bidders for takeover of Idcol Cement. Following disqualification of Lafarge, now only ACC and Orissa Cement Ltd (OCL) remain in the race. |
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| Sources said, the price quoted by ACC is almost twice that of OCL. However, the officials were tight lipped on the offer price of the two companies. |
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| Meanwhile, a high-level team of ACC is in town to renegotiate the offer price. Sources said, following the success of the state government in selling Badamba Sugar Mill at a much higher price than originally quoted by the bidder, the state government is making a hard bargain with ACC to increase the offer price. |
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| The Orissa government had decided to sale the unit following continuous losses though the unit had shown some signs of recovery in last two years. The Orissa government has 87 per cent stake in the company while the rest 13 per cent is owned by UTI. |
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| The 9.60 lakh tonne per annum Idcol Cement plant, located in Bargarh district of Orissa, is considered as one of the best cement making facilities in eastern India following its expansion and modernisation in 1995. |
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| However, the unit has been under performing for last few years because of its inability to keep pace with the increased thrust on marketing by the private players. The capacity utilisation of the plant was only 74 per cent in 2001-02. |
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| Idcol Cement is one of the ten units selected for disinvestments by the government in the first phase of the privatisation programme approved by the cabinet in November last year. It is also the most significant of the 36 slated for privatisation in a phased manner. |
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