The Steel Ministry has cleared the decks for granting Navratna status to the country’s biggest miner NMDC. “We have recommended granting Navratna status to NMDC and a notification is expected in the next few days. We have fulfilled a long-standing demand of the PSU’s employees in this connection,” steel minister Ram Vilas Paswan said while addressing the staff of NMDC here today.NMDC is already categorised as a Miniratna-1 company by the Department of Public Enterprises. Apart from an ex-gratia of Rs 10,000 per employee, a sum of Rs 25 crore would be distributed to its 5,500 employees of the company, for the excellent performance by the PSU. “NMDC has said it will produce 35 million tonnes (mt) of iron ore this year against 30 mt last year,” Paswan said. From Rs 48 crore profit in 1990-91, NMDC has come a long way to pay the highest dividend of 352 per cent in 2006-07 with production of about 27 mt of iron ore and a profit of over Rs 2,300 crore. NMDC entered the Rs 2-trillion market cap club last November, becoming the most coveted PSU, after ONGC. The current market cap of the company is around Rs 1.69 trillion. The company has 1.6 per cent of its shares listed on the bourses, that have risen by more than Rs 3,000 during the last one month. “We will invest Rs 18,000 crore in five years to ramp up production capacity to 50 mt of iron ore,” NMDC’s new CMD Rana Som said.It is targeting a turnover of Rs 3,005 crore this year and has paid 100 per cent interim dividend amounting to over Rs 130 crore to the Government already. Besides, NMDC, SAIL and RINL, is building a 4-mt steel plant in Chhattisgarh at the cost of Rs 1,244 crore, he added. The mineral giant would be setting up two pellet plants of 1 mt each at Donimalai in Karnataka at a cost of Rs 700 crore. Granting of Navratna status would enable NMDC to establish financial JVs and wholly-owned subsidiaries.
