Tuesday, September 12 2006 14:38 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: India is scouting for the latest technology to improve blast furnace efficiency of its steel plants in order to increase the annual steel output to 65 million tonnes from the current 42 million tonnes by 2012.

In this connection, a high-level delegation led by Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan held detailed discussions here yesterday with Philippe Varin, Chief Executive of Corus, an international company which is into steel and aluminium products.

Earlier in the day, the delegation had a separate meeting with NRI steel tycoon, Lakshmi Mittal who stated his intention to invest in India but sought 'facilitations' from the Centre and state governments of Orissa and Jharkhand and some kind of linkages to ensure availability of natural resources.

According to Paswan, Mittal suggested that India should ban export of high quality iron ore as in the years to come it might find shortages. India has a reserve of 23 billion tonnes of iron ore of which about 1 billion tonnes was of high quality ore.

Concurring with him, the minister said the ministry had already written to the Prime Minister to take necessary steps in that connection.

During the discussion with the Corus Group, Paswan said India proposed to invest 60 billion dollars to increase its steel production to 110 million tonnes by 2019.