The Tatas? honeymoon with the Left Front government in West Bengal seems to have ended. After Tata Motors, Tata Metaliks, another group company, is now shelving plans to expand its facility (pig iron) for billet making at Kharagpur at an investment of Rs 800 crore estimated in 2004. Instead, the company says it finds Karnataka, incidentally another BJP-ruled state, a better place for investment.
Confirming the development, Tata Metaliks managing director Harsh K Jha said, ?It?s four-and-half years now we have been waiting for 350 acre to expand our Kharagpur unit. But till date not a single acre has been allotted.?
?We have informed the government that we are not interested any more. Although the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBDIC) has written asking us to reconsider our decision but we have decided,? he added.
In fact, the Tatas? decision to pull out the prestigious Nano project from Bengal and go to Gujarat had given a big jolt to chief minister
Buddhadev Bhattarcharya?s initiative for industrialisation in the state. Now, Metaliks shelving its expansion plans in the state would only rub salt into the wound.
Jha said in 2004, the company had asked for 500 acre in Kharagpur, adjacent to Metalik?s existing unit on 200 acre for making a 0.6-mt-per-annum billet plant. The Bengal government then said it would be able to give 350 acre, to which the company agreed.
?As per the scale of West Bengal government, I think our investments are low. I think they are now no longer eager about investments below Rs 30,000-40,000 crore,? he added.
According to WBIDC managing director Subrata Gupta, the corporation had recently acquired 192 acre for Tata Metaliks and had also prepared a draft lease deed, but the company decided not to do the project here.
Gupta agreed that there had been a delay in land acquisition. While WBIDC could agree to a price of Rs 4 lakh per acre during 2004, it is now forced to ask Rs 8-12 lakh per acre due to escalation in land prices. However, Jha said price had never been an issue but ?we could not see an end to the process of transferring the land to us.?
The Karnataka government, he said, has given Tata Metaliks its consent for setting up an integrated steel plant on the 900 acre in the Bellary Hospet region, 300 km from Bangalore. Metaliks is at present planning to bring the billet plant within the integrated unit. .
The integrated steel unit would have a pig iron-making facility, a ductile pipe making facility, a steel making unit and a billet plant, Jha said. The configuration and investment details are yet to be worked out.
?Its not that we are considering Karnataka as an alternative destination. We planned to set up an integrated steel plant in Karnataka at the same time when we were planning to expand our facility in Kharagpur. But now that we have to shelve the Kharagpur project, we may bring it here,? he said.
The company engaged Meckon Enterprise, a consultancy firm to identify a site in the state. Jha said although the Karnataka government has given clear signals that it would allot 900 acre, much depends on whether the state government recommends the mining licence for the iron ore that Metaliks needs to run the integrated steel unit. Metaliks has applied for 16 iron ore blocks in the Bellary-Hospet region.