SAIL awaits Cabinet nod for merger with IISCO

The merger of the Indian Iron and Steel Company Ltd (IISCO) with the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) has been approved by the board of both the companies.

IISCO is a fully-owned subsidiary of SAIL. Officials in the steel ministry today said the proposal to merge the two entities would now be put before the Cabinet for final approval.

"IISCO owns plenty of mines, which can be beneficial for SAIL. Apart from this, once the two companies are merged, SAIL's management will have greater control over IISCO, resulting in a wide range of operational benefits," said a senior official in the ministry.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the Economic Editors' Conference here today. The final decision for the merger is expected to be taken in a month's time.

On the recent price rise announced by SAIL, Steel Minister Ramvilas Paswan said the prices of light and medium structurals had been increased by Rs 1,000 a tonne as the consumers were not getting the material at lower prices.

Paswan said steel production needed to be increased to 100 million tonnes by 2020 and envisaged an investment of Rs 2 lakh crore both by the private and public sectors.

"We need to increase our steel producing capacity to 100 million tonnes from the present level of 36 million tonnes. Going by the investment of Rs 2,500 crore per tonne we need investments of Rs 2 lakh crore," he said.

He also said the government would come out with a detailed steel policy, which would chalk out ways to increase production and also other issues, especially on the requirement of raw materials like coking coal.