Business

Mittal hopes to start work at Indian plants

NEW DELHI: Dubbing the Singur land row, which has been affecting Tata’s Nano car project, as a one-off incident, steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal on Wednesday declared that there was no question of ArcelorMittal backing out from its investment commitments in India but noted that inordinate delay in approvals was bound to push up project costs.

At an interaction with newspersons here, when asked whether AreclorMittal was scared of Singur-like incidents, Mr. Mittal said: “It does not give us nightmares. One instance of Singur cannot be an example for the entire country… If we can get the 123 deal [between India and the US] passed, why cannot we resolve the issue of Singur?”

Hoping that the row over land acquisition in Singur would soon be resolved and the Tata Motors’ low-cost car project would resume operations, Mr. Mittal said: “I am confident that the Nano issue will be resolved. After all, the Tatas are doing a wonderful thing and they are doing it for the people of India. We are living in a democracy, a country of law and I am sure and confident that the government concerned [West Bengal] and Tatas would resolve the issue very soon and amicably.”

Referring to ArcelorMittal’s initial plans to invest $20 billion for setting up two steel plants in Jharkhand and Orissa for a combined annual capacity of 24 million tonnes, he said: “There is something to learn and we are learning each and every day. There is no question of revisiting our decision to invest in India…”

However, the steel baron pointed out that setting up the two plants would now cost much more than the proposed $20 billion, mainly because the cost of inputs have already gone up by about 50 per cent. “We cannot call it cost over-run, but cost is definitely going to be more than what has been announced as prices of all inputs — be it steel, oil, machinery and other raw materials — have gone up… Globally, we are seeing the prices of every input items and other required things having gone up in the range of 30-50 per cent,” Mr. Mittal said.

Even in the wake of delays in getting mining linkages and acquisition of land, the AreclorMittal chief was hopeful that construction at both plant sites would begin by the first half of next year and in which case commissioning of the first phase production would start by the end of 2012. Besides, to avert controversies of the likes of Singur, the company has already started talking to villagers, panchayats and NGOs.

Mr. Mittal was in the capital for his company’s annual internal meeting which was attended by over 700 delegates from various project locations across the world.

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