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5000 crore financial aid to Steel Plant’KTR demands
Hyderabad April ’02 ‘2023-Working President of BRS and Minister of State KTR demanded that the central government leaders should stop the privatization of Vizag Steel plant and avoid the schemes of tying corporate allies. An open letter has been written to the central government in this regard. He said that the central government is continuing its plans to privatize the steel plant.
Hyderabad: BRS working president and state minister KTR has demanded that the central government officials should stop the privatization of Vizag Steel plant and avoid schemes to favor corporate allies. An open letter has been written to the central government in this regard. He said that the central government is continuing its plans to privatize the steel plant. It has been revealed that the Center has opened up the conspiracy to privatize Vizag Steel Plant in the background of the fact that the workers, various other unions and parties like Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) have been blocking it from time to time. In the name of raising funds for working capital and raw material, a notification has been issued to hand over the steel plant locks to private companies, he said.
The minister once again reiterated that the BRS is strongly opposed to the plans to privatize the Vizag Steel Plant. He said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the central government is always trying to kill the steel plant gradually only for the implementation of its agenda. He said that the Center is bragging about projects like Gati Shakti in the name of infrastructure creation and development, but the central government’s lack of commitment to completely privatize steel production, which is the most important for infrastructure projects, is clear. He said that the central government’s conspiracy is to convert the steel production sector into a non-strategic sector.
He said that the governments at the center, which had once completely privatized all the industries that produced cement on a large scale in the public sector, are now trying hard to hand over the steel industry to private companies in the same way. As a part of this, the Center is conspiring to hand over assets worth lakhs of crores to the private corporate friends as a loan before completely privatizing the Vizag Steel Plant, making it share the losses and showing them as an excuse.
As a part of that, the Center has knee-jerked by not allocating the special iron ware mines required for the steel plant. With this, Vizag Steel Plant has expressed concern that up to 60 percent of its production cost will have to be spent entirely on raw material. On the other hand, due to heavy allotment of iron ore, coal and other mines to private companies, the cost of raw materials in their production is less than 40 percent. Minister KTR said that Vizag steel plant is facing new challenges in competing with private corporate companies in terms of production due to having to spend on large scale raw materials and will have to sell at the same price as them in the market.
Conspiracy to push into losses..
Duyyabatta said that the central government’s conspiracy to ultimately push the Vizag steel plant into losses is evident in this. On the other hand, there is a situation where coking coal has to be brought from abroad and the iron raw material required for steel production has to be purchased from NMDC at market rate, he said, facing serious difficulties. KTR warned that more than half of the production had to be stopped for a year, and all this is part of a conspiracy to make the Vizag Steel Plant into losses and use those losses as an excuse to privatize it. KTR questioned why Prime Minister Modi, who canceled Rs 12.5 lakh crores to his friends of corporate companies on the pretext of losses, was not at least compassionate in the matter of Vizag Steel Plant.
In the name of working capital..
Although the Vizag Steel Plant has a capacity of 7.3 MTPA, it is unable to operate at its full capacity due to the central government not providing raw material and capital. The minister said that even the 50 percent capacity that is currently working would cost 100 percent capacity production. He clarified that if the central government fully supports the operation at full capacity, many expenses will come together and the profits of the steel plant will be affected.
Even now, the Vizag Steel Plant has been advised to completely abandon the attempt to tie up with private companies in the name of working capital. Instead, the minister appealed to the central government to strengthen the Vizag steel plant through other available means. He said that the central government sector organization Steel Authority of India (SAIL) has already announced its expansion plans at a cost of around Rs. It has been suggested that this company, which has announced a huge green field plan with a lakh crore of rupees, may be merged with the Vizag Steel Plant.
He said that there are many advantages of combining the central government with another public sector company rather than selling it to private companies at a low price. He said that this will contribute a lot to the expansion goal of the SAIL company. If SAIL moves forward in this direction, the necessary eco system will be created to set up another steel plant in Kadapa along with Bayyaram steel plant, which the Telangana government has been demanding for many years. Moreover, it is suggested that there is no need to depend on the benevolence of private companies for the security of steel supply required for the country’s basic sector.
Loan facility should be provided to steel plant.
He said that Vizag Steel Plant, which has assets of around one and a half crore rupees, is currently given the opportunity to monetize loans up to around Rs.25 thousand crores only. However, private companies with the same level of assets or value have been given the facility to get loans of around 70 to 80 thousand crore rupees. He said that if the central government provides credit facilities at par with private companies and provides more capital through banks, it will be possible for Vizag Steel Plant to conduct its operations to compete with private companies. He urged the central government to take initiative in this direction immediately.
It is suggested that the central government should immediately allocate at least Rs.5 thousand crores to the Vizag Steel Plant as required. He recalled that there were similar instances of direct allocation of funds to the Vizag Steel Plant during the tenure of PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who served as Prime Ministers in the past. Currently Vizag Steel Plant is asking for Rs. 5 thousand crores and Central Government can take enough equity for that. On this occasion, the Minister reminded the Central Government that the Vizag Steel Plant had returned the money given by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2003 along with interest in 2008.
The notice should be cancelled.
The Center wants to immediately cancel the notice of expression of interest which has been arranged in the name of providing capital and buying steel products. Instead, it has been suggested that the central government should purchase steel directly from the Vizag steel plant for the infrastructure projects that it claims to be undertaking on a large scale in the country. In this regard, it is enough to provide advance money and purchase steel.
Apart from these, it is clear that this expression of interest was given with the malicious intention of introducing private companies into the Vizag Steel Plant. At least the agreement that will be established in this does not include any specific terms, and it is only recently that the center has not clarified in this matter to make an appropriate agreement with their friend’s company, which has lost its wealth heavily and has fallen in the list of global financial losers.
The aim is to sell public sector companies.
From the first day of the formation of the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi (PM Modi) in Delhi, KTR strongly criticized that the only agenda is to sell the public sector enterprises as debt. He said that tens of public sector organizations have already been privatized and caused immense loss to the nation. He said that Prime Minister Modi is privatizing the public sector companies, which once played the most important role in the development of the country, just showing the losses as an excuse, and now he is trying to sell the companies like Navratna which are running at a profit. He criticized that profits are being profited and losses are being nationalized.The BJP at the Center wants to clarify what kind of message it is sending to the country by weakening public sector institutions.
We will make people aware..
Minister KTR made it clear that BRS as a party has the sincerity to save the Vizag Steel Plant. They expressed concern that the central government would definitely conspire to hand over the Vizag steel plant to their favored private company. Faced with this, they are also ready to work with Vizag Steel Plant workers with the sole aim of saving their future jobs. For this purpose, people will be made more active with the forces, public associations and parties that come together. He said that the Vizag Steel Plant is the right of the Telugu people and it is necessary for all Telugu people to come together to protect it.Vizag Steel Plant, which was established with many sacrifices and struggles, should not be a victim of some selfish forces and their agendas, the minister said, and will not accept it under any circumstances.
He expressed concern over the central government’s behavior which has already cut off the public sector enterprises on a large scale, saying that the central conspiracies will not stop with the privatization of the Vizag steel plant. In this direction, the Center is making efforts to ensure that other public sector organizations like LIC, BSNL, Singareni also end up in the hands of private companies. KTR appealed to the employees of the public sector organizations that BRS is ready to walk with them for the welfare of lakhs of workers and to come along with them in this direction. KTR advised Andhra Pradesh BRS branch president Thota Chandrasekhar to unite Vizag steel plant workers and labor unions to show solidarity with them to face this latest conspiracy by the central government.
