Bauxite production in India showed overall downfall in FY2017-18

According to the estimates of the Ministry of Mines, bauxite production in India further fell by 16.34 per cent in 2017-18, totalling 20.63 million tonnes, after a decline of 12.3 per cent in 2016-17. On the other hand, Ministry further updated that the total domestic consumption of primary aluminium remained same in 2017-18 as that of 1.55 million tonnes in 2016-17.

According to a senior aluminium industry executive, the sudden fall of bauxite production in India is due to the decrease of export to China. Earlier China used to import a significant amount of bauxite from India but now Australia and Guinea have become significant bauxite exporters to China due to better quality and low cost. Moreover, the domestic aluminium consumption remained low over the past few years. Hence, there had been no significant growth in bauxite industry, the senior executive added.

On March 21, Sajjan Jindal, chairman and managing director, JSW Group, tweeted: “India has the world’s fifth-largest Bauxite reserve estimated at around 3.5 billion tonnes which is of a very high quality. It’s high time our government comes up with some policy on aluminium production in India.”

The share of public sector mines in the total bauxite production in India was 31 per cent, with Odisha, being the leading bauxite producer, 49 per cent contribution, followed by Gujarat 24 per cent, Jharkhand 9 per cent, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra 8 per cent each. The rest of the contribution was from private sector mines. There were 157 reporting mines of bauxite during 2016-17, of which 17 were owned by public sector units and 140 by private sector players.