Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, May 5, 2015 :

Ten of 29 closed mines lease holders are expected to executing supplementary lease deeds for reopening mines, according to Odisha director of mines, Deepak Mohanty.

Mohanty said this on the sidelines of an hour-long meeting held here on Tuesday among senior officials of the mines department, mines lease holders and representatives of industries to discuss the issues of supply of raw materials, especially iron ore, to industries within the state and determination of rates for its supply.

The principal secretary, steel and mines had called for a meeting of the mining lessees and representatives from the industries just to take stock of the field situation. The State Cabinet had earlier decided to supply iron ore to industries within the state through the state-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC).

The meeting discussed facilitating supply of raw materials to 49 industries, Mohanty told media persons flowing the deliberations. “However, there was no discussion on the issue of stamp duty”, he said adding that no one from those companies which will be required to sign security lease deeds had come for today’s meeting.

As there had been a demand for proper coordination between lessee and end-user industries in the mining sector, the Tuesday meeting assumes significance. The industry associations had strongly objected to the fixation of Base Rate for the Auctions by the OMC saying that the base price fixed by the OMC is not realistic and hence is not fulfilling the objective of fair price determination.

Mohanty claimed that the government has removed the bottlenecks over the issue of pricing of ores.

“The government has revised it; from now onwards, pricing will be done on a monthly basis. The lessee’s selling price for the last month will be taken into account for fixing the price. We will no longer insist on rates published by IBM, which are three to four months older and comparatively higher. The response of the miners has been very positive to the changes made. Both sides were requested to ensure proper coordination between them so that no problem arises at the field level,” said the director Mines.

Eastern India Mine Owners Association president R L Mohanty also confirmed that they deliberated on different issues at the meeting. “Since the new policy is in place, problems do exist. Industries were asked whether they were getting their supplies regularly or not to which they replied in the affirmative”.