Odisha govt talks to mines, industry on raw material supply

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, May 5:

Senior officials of the Mines department of the Odisha government today held an hour-long meeting with mining lease holders and representatives of industries to discuss the issues of supply of raw materials, especially iron ore, to industries within the state  and determination of rates for its supply.

odisha-jharkhand mines

The meeting discussed facilitating supply of raw materials to 49 industries with whom the state government has signed MoUs and several other industries operating in the state without MoUs, informed Deepak Mohanty, director of Mines after the meeting.

The State Cabinet had earlier decided to supply iron ore to industries within the state through the state-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC).

On the other hand, the state government has allowed reopening of 29 closed mines in the state. Ten mines lease holders are executing supplementary lease deeds at Sundargarh today for reopening mines, said Mohanty.

“No, there was no discussion on the issue of stamp duty. No one from those companies which will be required to sign security lease deeds had come for today’s meeting. The principal secretary had called for a meeting of the mining lessees and representatives from the industries just to take stock of the field situation. As you all know, there needs to be proper coordination between lessee and end-user industries in the mining sector. This meeting was held to ensure that coordination. The preemption policy of 50:50 distribution was made clear at the meeting. The government has removed the bottlenecks over the issue of pricing of ores. The government has revised it; from now onwards, pricing will be done on a monthly basis. The lessee’s selling price for the last month will be taken into account for fixing the price. We will no longer insist on rates published by IBM, which are three to four months older and comparatively higher. The response of the miners has been very positive to the changes made. Both sides were requested to ensure proper coordination between themselves so that no problem arises at the field level,” said the director Mines.

“Different issues were discussed at the meeting. Since it’s being newly implemented, teething problems do exist. Industries were asked whether they were getting their supplies regularly or not to which they replied in the affirmative,“ said R L Mohanty, president of Eastern India Mine Owners Association.

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