Temporary freeze on Posco steel project

Bhubaneswar: The state government on Thursday said Posco has decided to temporarily freeze its Rs 52,000-crore steel project in the state, said industries minister Debi Prasad Mishra in the assembly in a written reply on a query whether Posco has already backed out of the project.
The project, believed to be the largest FDI in the country, has failed to take off even after 11 years of the MoU being inked following protest against land acquisition and delay in getting mining block.
The South Korean steel behemoth had signed the MoU with the state government on June 22, 2005 to set up a 12-million tonne per annum (mtpa) steel plant near Paradip.
Protests against land acquisition by locals forced the company to reduce its capacity to 8 mtpa in May 2012.
The project ran into further trouble after the amended Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation Act-2015 came into force which abolished the provision of preferential allotment of mining blocks. The company's hope to get the Khandadhar iron ore reserve in Sundargarh district was dashed with it.
So far, the state government has handed over around 1,880 acre for the project against its demand for 2,700 acre.
Though Odisha industrial infrastructure development corporation, the state's nodal agency for land acquisition, has acquired remaining 900 acre, it is yet to be transferred to the company.
Even though the Prime Minister's Office held a tripartite meeting (attended by Centre, Odisha government and Posco) to end the Posco deadlock on August 25, last year, it failed to yield the desired result.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik during his meeting with Union finance minister Arun Jaitley in October 2015 urged to hold another high-level meeting to end the deadlock. The Centre is yet to take a call on it.
The minister said of the 92 companies, who signed MoU with the state government to invest in the state, six have pulled out. These are Maharashtra Seamless Limited, Arcelor Mittal India Limited, Sterlite Industries Limited, Bhushan Energy Limited, Tata Power Company Limited and Kalinga Energy and Power Limited.