Experts to vet NMDC ore pricing

New Delhi, July 15: The Expert group that will be formed by the government to study sale of iron ore by NMDC, will also analyse the mining giants ore pricing and auction, Steel Minister Chaudhary Birendra Singh said on Friday.

Yesterday, Singh held a review meeting of the country's largest iron ore miner, where he instructed officials to form the expert group. “I wanted to understand their pricing policy and on that I made a comment that there is a need to have an expert group of my ministry to know that how pricing system is prevalent and how the auctioning is taking place. When we have a system of e- auctions and e- tendering, then why manually. They ( NMDC officials) explained certain things and that manually because of certain constraints they have not migrated to the electronic. So I wanted to know what way can be found out,” Mr Singh said.

When asked who will constitute the panel, he said: “I can’t say now, but naturally there will be a group of our officers and we may get support of some experts.”

The development comes in the wake of government’s think tank Niti Aayog, in March, raising the issue of iron ore being exported at a price, which is “substantially lower” than the rate at which it is available for domestic industry.

Aayog was of the view that extraction of minerals should also benefit the industry by value addition, resulting in strengthening of the manufacturing sector.