SEA Representatives Meet MoS Steel To Press For Remerger of RINL With SAIL

Steel Executives Association (SEA) President Katam SS Chandra Rao, General Secretary KVD Prasad, Vice President Chandra Venkateswara Rao and Joint Secretary Narasimha met Union Minister of State for Steel and Heavy Industries, Bhupatiraju Srinivasa Varma in his office in Bhimavaram. They appraised honorable minister regarding issues pertaining to the steel plant as well as officials working there.

During meeting SEA has explained that the Debts of RINL accumulated to Rs 20,000 crore because of forced expansion from 3 MT to 7.3 MT insisted by Government of India as a part of National Steel Policy 2005 without giving iron ore security. Moreover, product mix plan of the expansion by then ministry of steel also went wrong. RINL has to bear an interest burden of approx ₹1800 crore per year apart from ₹2,500 -3000 cr iron ore extra burden as another GOI owned mining company NMDC is supplying at international market price. Entire expansion expenditure was borned by RINL through loans. Government has not invested a single rupee for this expansion.

Moreover, permissions related to Expansion also delayed. Apart from these interest burden and ore burden, Banks are not giving proper support for working capital, which led to heavy drop in production. Since past three years, RINL is operating at 60% of its installed capacity of 7.3 Million tonnes. Cost of production increased because of the under utilisation of the equipment is leading to heavy losses, they explained.

RINL employees are not reason for the losses faced by the PSU and the same was stated previously in Parliament by former MoS Steel, Vishnu Deo Sai, they reminded.

They appealed that Merger with SAIL is only the best way to RINL as well as Indian steel industry and submitted detailed presentation to Honorable Minister of Steel. He ensured that he will go through the presentation and representation thoroughly and will again discuss with all stakeholders in his visit to Vizag.