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Showing posts with label SAIL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SAIL. Show all posts
Worried over domestic coking coal price hike effected by state-owned CIL, the country's largest steel maker SAIL today said it is in negotiations with the miner on the issue as it is difficult for the company to absorb the increase.

"We are under negotiations with them and working model will come out," Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) Chairman P K Singh told Press Trust of Indida on Coal India Ltd's recent hike in coking coal prices.

CIL arm Bharat Coking Coal Ltd this month increased the prices of coking coal by about 20 per cent.

Another subsidiary of the world's largest miner Central Coalfields Ltd has also increased price of metallurgical coal this month.

"SAIL are in dialogue with CIL. We have told (them) that at this stage it is difficult for us to absorb (the hike in coking coal price). They have agreed to form a committee," Singh said.

The panel which will be constituted will have members from both the state-owned firms.

SAIL too is a state-owned firm and is a prime consumer of coking coal as well as a major customer of CIL's metallurgical coal.

"We have an MoU with Coal India. Once we are in that MoU, that pact remains applicable for the entire financial year. MoU means we also have an assured offtake from Coal India and We take coking coal from them. We take domestic coking coal supply only from Coal India," Singh said.

According to an official, the price of various grades of coking coal of CIL varies between Rs 2,400 and Rs 5,050 per tonne.

Asserting that SAIL was unable to recover its variable cost of production, he said there was a lot of pressure on its operations.

On possibility of price increase by the steel PSU, he said "it will depend on market situation". Of its total requirement, SAIL imports 86 per cent of metallurgical coal, while the rest is sourced indigenously.

The steel PSU has existing captive coking coal production of nearly 0.5 million tonnes per annum.

The global coking coal price, which was at USD 80 per tonne in January last year, rose to USD 283 per tonne in December, Indian Steel Association Secretary General Sanak Mishra said.

However, in early January, global price of metallurgical coal came down to USD 193 per tonne, Mishra said.

(Source: Economics Times, Janaury 30, 2017)
Mjunction services, an online procurement and sales platform floated jointly by the Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and Tata Steel, is now eyeing new verticals to boost revenue.
"We are now looking at various other verticals like tea, power, construction, automobiles and logistics to help increase our revenue," mjunction MD and CEO Viresh Oberoi told PTI.
Oberoi said mjunction had facilitated the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company (WBSEDCL) to buy power online to meet its shortfall.
"So far, the Distribution Company (DISCOM) was purchasing power offline. Now after an online purchase, the company has been able to save a lot," he said. 
He said that this model was also being extended to tea companies.
"We are discussing with the tea companies regarding their purchase of tea from small Bought Leaf factories," he said.
Oberoi said that mjunction had helped Tata Tea buy 10% of their annual procurement of tea from Bought Leaf factories from Dooars and Assam regions. This will be extended to South India also, he said.
"We are now looking at construction, logistics and automobiles," Oberoi said.
He said that every year, there has been a 15% to 20% rise in revenue by new services.
For getting into more such areas, he said the company had set up an incubation cell to develop ideas.
Among financial services, mjunction will also enter online bill discounting business for which it had got the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) approval.
About financials, he said the company had been making profits and the value of transactions done was Rs 45,000 crore in the last fiscal.
"We are now looking at a top line growth of 30% year-on-year, out of which 20% will be from new businesses and 10% from old ones", he said.  
(Source: DNA, Assorted with PTI,  January 4, 2016)
India has moved up one position to become the world’s seventh most valued ‘nation brand’, with an increase of 32 percent in its brand value to USD 2.1 billion.

The US remains on the top with a valuation of USD 19.7 billion, followed by China and Germany at the second and the third positions respectively, as per the annual report on world’s most valuable nation brands compiled by Brand Finance.

The UK is ranked 4th, Japan is at fifth position and France is sixth on the list. While India and France have moved up one position each since last year, all the top-five countries have retained their respective places. However, the surge of 32 percent in India’s ‘nation brand value’ is the highest among all the top-20 countries on the list.

China has retained its second position despite a decline of one percent in its brand value to USD 6.3 billion. Brand Finance said it measures the strength and value of the nation brands of 100 leading countries using a method based on the royalty relief mechanism employed to value the world’s largest companies.

The nation brand valuation is based on five year forecasts of sales of all brands in each nation and follows a complex process. The Gross domestic product (GDP) is used as a proxy for total revenues.
The report also said that India’s ‘Incredible India’ slogan has worked well, while Germany suffered due to the Volkswagen crisis. About the US, the report said it remains a powerful brand with an inviting business climate.

“However its value comes in large part from the country’s sheer economic scale… The US’ world-leading higher education system and the soft power arising from its dominance of the music and entertainment industries are significant contributors too. This soft power will help the US to retain the most valuable nation brand for some time after China’s seemingly imminent rise to become the world’s biggest economy,” it added.

The study further said that China’s recent stock market turbulence and slowing growth will also extend the US’ tenure of the top spot. Among the BRICS nations, India is the only country to have witnessed an increase in its brand value with all others – Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa – seeing a dip in their respective brand valuations.

India is the second most valued among these emerging economies after China, followed by Brazil, Russia and South Africa.

(Source – Assorted with the Inputs from PTI)

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Directorate General (Safeguards) has recommended provisional safeguard duty of 20% ad-valorem for period of 200 days on imports of hot-rolled flat products of non-alloy and other alloy steel in coils of a width of 600 mm or more into India with immediate effect.

“On the basis of analysis of the application filed by the domestic industry and the injury parameters it is observed that the domestic industry is suffering serious injury/threat of serious injury in respect of market share, profits/losses, inventory, decline in domestic selling prices etc,” Directorate General said in a release today.

There exists critical circumstances, where any delay in application for provisional safeguard measures would cause damage which would be difficult to repair, Vinay Chhabra, director general at Directorate General of Safeguards was quoted as saying.

Directorate General (Safeguards) had initiated a safeguard investigation on imports of hot rolled alloy and non?alloy flat steel coils on an application jointly filed by Essar steel, JSW steel (JSTL) and SAIL, accounting for more than 50 percent of India’s total production of said products.

So far, in a bid to protect the domestic steel industry, government has hiked the steel import duty twice, in August by 2.5 percent and in June by another 2.5 percent taking the total import duty to 15 percent from 10 percent earlier.

Imposition of safeguard duty will bring Free Trade Agreement (FTA) countries like Japan and Korea also into the duties' net, which was not the case earlier when import duty was hiked as the latter was meant more for other countries such as China and Russia.
The government will kick off its Rs 58,000-crore disinvestment programme for 2014-15 today, with dilution of a 5% stake in Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL).

The floor price for disinvestment in SAIL will be set at Rs 83 a share, slightly lower than its closing price of Rs 83.35 on the BSE on Thursday, according to an exchange filing.

If shares are sold at Rs 83 a piece, the government will be able to mop Rs 1,714 crore. However, the official said there would be a five per cent discount for retail investors. A little over Rs 160 crore worth of shares will be reserved for retail investors.

The new norms issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) earlier this week, to allow retail investors to apply at the cut-off price, will not be applicable for the SAIL offering, said a banker handling the issue. Investors participating in the offer-for-sale (OFS) will have to bid above Rs 83 per share. The allotment will happen on a price priority basis. Which means investors who bid higher will get the allotment. In case of oversubscription, allotment will be made on a time priority basis if the bidding price is the same.

Following the stake sale, the government holding in SAIL will come down from 80 per cent to 75 per cent.

Brokers said a lot of investors have built short positions in SAIL in the derivatives segment to cash in on arbitrage opportunities.  These investors will benefit if they are able to buy shares of SAIL in the OFS at below their shorting price. Shares of SAIL have corrected more than 5 per cent in the previous two trading sessions on selling pressure ahead of the share sale. Volumes in the SAIL counter in the cash and derivatives segment remained high on Thursday. The stock was also actively traded in the stock lending and borrowing (SLB) counter.

The government will start its disinvestment programme by diluting its stake by five per cent in SAIL on Friday through OFS. Shares of SAIL fell 0.35 per cent to close at Rs 85.35 on BSE.

The Centre plans to raise Rs 36,925 crore by selling its stake in 10 public sector undertakings, including behemoths Oil and Natural Gas Corpatiion (ONGC), Coal India and NHPC, and smaller firms like Power Finance Corporation (PFC), Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) and Container Corporation of India (Concor).

Additionally, it plans to raise about Rs 6,500 crore from part-sale of the stake it holds through Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India (Suuti) in Axis Bank, Larsen & Toubro, and ITC; and Rs 15,000 crore from sale of its residual stake in Hindustan Zinc and Bharat Aluminium Company (Balco).

Apart from SAIL, finance ministry officials are confident that Coal India, ONGC, and NHPC will hit the market by the end of January. At current prices, the combined proceeds from these four public sector behemoths will be around Rs 42,911 crore.

So far, however, there is less clarity on stake sales in the smaller companies, some of which might be shelved. The combined proceeds from sale of five per cent each in Concor, PFC, REC and MOIL could be about Rs 5,210 crore at current rates, while the government expects about Rs 5,500 crore from sale of 10 per cent each in Hindustan Aeronautics and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has set a tight fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent of gross domestic product, so every rupee counts.

The tax authorities have to raise Rs 6.54 lakh crore in the second half of 2014-15 — 28 per cent more than what they did in the period from October 2013 to March 2014 — to meet the full-year target of Rs 9.77 lakh-crore. So, it is imperative that the targets from disinvestment, spectrum sales, and special dividends are met.

(Source - Business Standard, Dec 5, 2014)
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