Limestone potential yet to be fully exploited

 Huge limestone reserves in the state are not being utilised fully because of insufficient excavation.

 Industrialists and corporates believe that further excavation by the government agencies may encourage more cement plants to be set up in the state, thus bringing further investments in this segment.

 Although Gujarat has abundant reserves of limestone, the annual limestone production of the state is just 0.12 per cent of the total reserves, leaving a huge scope for limestone excavation in the state.

 If mining of limestone (more than 90 per cent of limestone excavated is used in the manufacture of cement) continues at this rate, reserves will last for over 600 years and, by that time, the construction industry will have upgraded to more efficient raw materials than cement, say industry sources.

 Industrialists also state that there is a scope for more cement manufacturing plants to come up in the state with captive limestone mines.

 Chetan Shah, managing director of Ashapura Minichem, while delivering a lecture on the mining industry in Gujarat at the Global Investors