India Steel Market Watch
October 12: India remains a bright spot in the global coal market amid slowdown and is likely to emerge as the largest importer of the fuel, mjunction CEO and MD Viresh Oberoi said while inaugurating the 9th edition of the Indian Coal Markets Conference in Kolkata.
“Though the increasing imports have various implications for the economy, they nevertheless are an indicator of the growth momentum. While coal production is growing at the rate of 9-10%, and is targeted to reach over 1 billion tons by 2020, imports are expected to breach 300 million tons in the next 5 years. The growth is evident in coal-consuming sectors like power and steel but there remains a lot of opportunities as a large section of the population still lacks access to power,” he said.
Oberoi set the tone with his power-packed welcome address for the conference. He shared the coal story of India vis-à-vis the global scenario. He said: “We at mjunction are creating more transparency in the system so that operations can be simplified and made more efficient.”
On the ease of doing business, he said, India is between the Gaza strip and Uzbekistan at 142nd position. We need to move up the ladder considerably. It is good that the government is making the states compete on the ease of doing business.
Going forward, India has a great growth story with a GDP growth rate between 7% and 8%. The only other country to witness a comparable growth is China, he added.
Oberoi chaired the first session, wherein the other panelists were Partha S Bhattacharyya of Deepak Fertilizers, Arup Roy Choudhury, former NTPC CMD, Alok Perti, Former Coal Secretary, S K Shahi, Joint Coal Secretary in the Government of India and Sambitosh Mahapatra from PwC.