The government should sort out internal challenges at a time when the domestic steel industry is facing challenges from China, Tata Steel Managing Director (India and South East Asia) T V Narendran said today.

“We can do much better had the government addressed internal challenges such as availability of raw material and import duty as demand of steel would continue to grow,” he told reporters here.

Narendran said it was not that Indian producers are not competitive with world players as “our five/six steel producers feature in the top steel producers of the world even now’’.

Elaborating on the challenges, Narendran said: “China is producing 825 million tonnes of steel against its demand of 725 mt. They are producing 100 mt more than the demand, which was more than the current total capacity of our country, which was between 80 to 85 million tonnes.’’

China is exporting two to three million tonnes, which is spoiling the Indian market, he said, adding that the total export of steel to India is 10 mt, which is equivalent to the capacity of Tata Steel’s Jamshedpur plant.

“We could set up a steel plant if (we) could have such a volume of export of steel”, he said.

This would not only help Tata Steel but also other steel producers such as Jindals, Bhushans, SAIL, among others, to set up a steel plant and increase the manufacturing capacity, since India is targeting to enhance it to 300 mt, he added.

To achieve the target, he said, “We will have to invest more than $200 billion to produce additional 200 million tonnes of steel.”

The central government has taken various initiatives in this regard and more steps are needed to be taken to attract investment, he suggested, while focusing on the need to implement projects in sectors such as infrastructure and automobile to increase steel consumption and create job opportunities.

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