Orissa CM still hopeful over Posco

Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Sunday said he was still optimistic about the Rs 52,000 crore Posco steel project in the state. “Posco has proposed to be the largest FDI in the country. I am hopeful of it coming up here,” said Mr Patnaik while participating in a meeting here. He informed that the state government had taken the Prime Minister in loop over the incident and was trying to convene a meeting at the Central government-level to sort out the issues. It may be mentioned here that on July 15, Posco had announced to freeze its Orissa project. Experts see nothing new in the CM’s latest statement as the state government has been trying in vain since the past six months and has not been able make much progress to facilitate the 12-million-tonne per annum project. Notably, after several rounds of talks at various levels between the company, the state and the Central government that failed to bring in a conclusion, Mr Patnaik on October 22 had requested Union finance minister Arun Jaitley to convene a tripartite meeting with Posco officials to take a final call on the project.

Once again, nothing much has progressed since then. Interestingly, after announcing to temporarily freeze its 12 million tonne per annum mega steel plant in the state, the company has gone ahead with a $3 billion – 1.5 million tonne per annum (MTPA) plant at Satarda in Maharashtra in a JV with Shree Uttam Steel and Power Ltd. The MoU for the project was signed on August 11.

Besides, the company has also surrendered around 7300 sq ft of its office space in Bhubaneswar citing lack of need and is now operating out of a 5000 sq ft facility compared to a 12300 sq ft allotted to them initially.