Govt of India to set up Aluminium Development Council: union mines secretary

The Centre on Thursday, July 30, announced to set up Aluminium Development Council in the lines of Steel Development Council to address various issues of aluminium industry including effect of global slowdown, promoting per capita use and raw material linkage.

"The proposed Aluminium Council Development is a genuine demand of the industry and it will be set up soon under the chairmanship of union mines minister or secretary. The council would undertake an independent study on how to adjust various segments associated with the industry in the regulatory framework," said union mines secretary Balvinder Kumar. He was speaking at a national seminar of 'Aluminium: the strategic metal' organised by the Aluminium Association of India (AAI) here.

He said, despite global slowdown, domestic Aluminium industry is fast recovering as India has registered a growth of 19 per cent and 25 per cent in Aluminium production and consumption, respectively against the global growth rate of 6 per cent and 9 per cent for the same. "India has huge potential in Aluminium having 7th highest bauxite reserves of the world at the tune of 3.7 billion tonnes. Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have tremendous scope for exploration to facilitate aluminium production," Kumar said.

The demand of aluminium in the country would accelerate in coming days following major infrastructure initiatives like 100 smart cities, freight corridor and huge investment in power generation, Kumar said. However, he raised concern over the fact existing installed capacity for aluminium production is much less than the demand. President of AAI and CMD of Nalco T K Chand raised various issues faced by the aluminium industry like high cost of production due to power tariff and logistic charges.

"Power tariff in India is about 50 per cent higher than that in the Middle East while logistics charges in India are 20 per cent against that of 9 per cent in the Middle East. There is an urgent need to take up cost reduction exercises," said Chand. He also demanded to treat bauxite at par with limestone with regard to railway freight charges and also to consider alumina in the non-metal sector. Kumar also agreed to promote Odisha as the Aluminium Capital of India being the producer of country's 72 per cent alumina and over 65 per cent aluminium.