Ambarish Mukherjee

New Delhi , Sept. 10

THE national steel policy, being readied by the Ministry of Steel, is to focus on comprehensive development of the sector, taking into consideration the infrastructural requirement of the steel manufacturers as well as the issue of availability of raw materials.

The Ministry has already collected the necessary data from most of the manufacturers based on which it will make its own calculations of future requirements at a macro level.

The data includes the public infrastructure requirement of the companies such as port, road and railway facilities. The Ministry has also collected information on steel companies' planned expansions based on which the infrastructural requirements are being worked out, official sources said.

The policy will also try to identify the supply-side bottlenecks faced by the manufacturers and try to suggest remedial measures.

The Ministry has collected details of the steel manufacturers' requirements of raw materials.The Steel Ministry is also in the process of consulting other Ministries such as the Ministry of Surface Transport and the Ministry of Railways for developing the comprehensive policy.

This is because the steel sector is heavily dependent on transport, both for raw materials as well as for their final products and if goods movement is not smooth and in time, then they bring down the profitability of all steel projects, officials said.

The data collected by the Ministry includes total tonnage of raw materials to be loaded at various ports as well as finished and semi-finished steel over the next 5-10 years.

The data being studied also includes the steel sector's overall requirement of railway transportation in terms of million tonnes per kilometre along with the detailed break-up of volumes and distances for raw materials, finished and semi-finished steel that that would be transported by road, sources said.

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