India: 40% of iron ore desposit lies in reserve forest, sanctuaries

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

30 Jun 2008

Stringent forest acts and acute scarcity of coking coal seemed to be the major hurdles towards the growth of the steel industry in the country which is aiming to occupy the second place after China by 2020.  India, which produced 57 MT of steel in 2007, targets addition of another 50 MT in the next four years and 200 MT by 2020, official sources said.  "Unless the government comes out with some innovative ways and means to allow mining of iron ore in reserve forests and wildlife sanctuaries, many of the proposed capacities may not materialise," Dalip Singh, Joint Secretary in the Steel Ministry said.
Nearly 40 per cent of the country's reserve fall in magnetite categories, located in reserve forest belts or wildlife sanctuaries, Singh said in his keynote address at the fourth international iron and steelmaking seminar here.
Though the country was endowed with significant reserve of iron ore according to the data given by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), only 7.2 billion tons of ore were economically mineable. India had a reserve of nearly 25.25 billion tons of iron ore, the data say.
Of the 7.2 billion tons of mineable ore, 1.3 billion tons were categorised as high-grade while the medium grade reserve was only 3.54 billion tons, he said.
"It is important to note that there are substantial resources in low grade categories and industry must focus on utilising these ores through suitable techniques", he said.

Source: Economic Times