Steel industry needs to focus on technology: Beni Prasad Verma

Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma has said that steel producers need to adopt suitable technologies to produce special grades of steel at competitive prices. He said this while delivering the inaugural address at the Steel Summit 2013 jointly organised by Ministry of Steel and CII in New Delhi recently. The theme for the Summit was ‘roadmap for global competitiveness: opportunities and challenges’.
Speaking on the occasion the Minister pointed out that there is a huge potential for use of steel in the rural areas, where the ingress of steel has been limited. He also stressed on the need for adopting pelletisation technology for use of low grade ore. Speaking on the way forward the steel industry in India, he said, “Every steel producer must make business more sustainable.”
Mr Verma further said that the Indian steel industry needs to invest more in research and development and enumerated the steps taken by his ministry to incentivise steel production. He also added that transportation of raw material through alternate technologies like slurry pipelines could be a better solution for movement of inputs.
Also present on the occasion were Chairman SAIL, C.S. Verma, CMD, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, A.P. Choudhary and Director General, CII, Chandrajit Banerjee along with senior officials from the Ministry of Steel, representatives of CII and delegates from the industry.