Investors cannot abdicate responsibility to government and adopt a hands-off approach, said Biswadip Gupta, joint managing director and chief executive officer, JSW Bengal Steel.
Citing the JSW Bengal Steel project, he said that the project had seen many difficulties but worked its way around to make it happen. Gupta was speaking at a seminar on industrialization in Bengal organized by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce.
JSW Bengal Steel is a 10 million tons steel plant coming up at Salboni in West Medinipur. Bengal does have iron ore so JSW would have to bring in the raw material from neighbouring state. Coking coal linkages have been tied up in Bengal.
Gupta said, the company has got two soft coking coal blocks having reserves of around 300 million tons and one hard coking coal block having around 150 million tons.
He also pointed out that there is no deep sea port in Bengal, so the company would be setting up a port in Orissa. “The distance between the project and Orissa port is shorter than what it would have been from Haldia,” said Gupta.
Gupta was giving examples to demonstrate that the company had gone out to overcome the hurdles on its own rather than depending on the government to solve it.
One of the major obstacles facing mega projects was land acquisition. However, JSW has the land for the project in its possession, part of which was acquired privately by the company.
