Posco all praise for Bengal model

South Korean steel giant Posco, which proposes to set up a 12 million tonne a year greenfield steel plant near Paradip (Orissa) at an investment of Rs 51,000 crore, 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," said Chang-ho-Kwag, director, Posco Research Institute.

Presenting a paper at the international steel conference in Orissa, Kwag said, though the Orissa government has signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 46 steel companies, only 26 small and medium scale projects have started partial production. Most of the mega projects are not making any headway, he rued.

It may be noted that many mega projects, including that of Posco, are mired in land acquisition and displacement problems.

"To expedite project implementation, one-stop mechanism for mega projects may be put in place by the state government," said Kwag, adding that 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 need to develop social infrastructure as well. Educating the people about the benefits of the project was very important for materialisation of the projects, he observed.

He said, the demand for coking coal was likely to grow at a faster pace from the eastern states as a number of steel majors were setting up their plants in this part of the country. Orissa with a long coastline was likely to see a huge surge in coal imports for upcoming units.

He said, the company expected crude steel production capacity in the country to go up to 275 million tonne by 2020, if all the projects in the pipeline go onstream. Most of the capacity addition during this period would be in the eastern states of Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattishgarh and West Bengal.

The company plans to start the preparatory work for actual construction of the plant in October. However, it faces difficulties due to delay in grant of prospecting licence and land acquisition for its project.