BHUBANESWAR: Minister for Steel and Mines Raghunath Mohanty on Wednesday said in the Assembly that there was proposal to take back the land provided to Tisco for the establishment of a steel plant as a SEZ will be set up there. To a question from Ramesh Chandra Chau Patnaik (BJD), the Minister said the proposal of Tisco for establishment of a multi-product SEZ on the land provided for the steel plant had been approved in principle by the Centre. The Minister said that the Centre had given permission to Gopalpur SEZ Limited, a subsidiary of Tata Steel, to develop the SEZ. He said preliminary work including construction of boundary wall and road has started. But he could not say when the project would be completed. The Minister, however, said that employment opportunities would be created after completion of the project. Mohanty said the State Government had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Tisco on August 28, 1995 for establishment of a 2.5 million tonne capacity steel plant. The capacity of the proposed plant was later expanded to 10 million tonne, he said and added that the MoU has lapsed. To supplementaries, the Minister said Tata Steel will set up an industrial park in the SEZ. The park will have Tisco’s four lakh tonne per annum capacity steel rebar mill, 55,000 tonne per annum capacity ferro chrome plant and 1.2 million gallon per day capacity water desalination plant. Tata Steel will invest ` 1,000 crore in the park. The Minister said an estimated ` 5,000 crore would be spent for development of ancillaries in the park. Besides, downstream industries of ` 15,000 crore will be set up. He said that the park was being developed to attract investment in the steel sector, motor parts industry and other areas. Required infrastructure will be developed for attracting investment in apparels, gems, jewelleries and speciality chemicals sectors, he said.
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