Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today advised the domestic steel industry to take a long-term view and not seek windfall gains in a period of high demand.

“I would advise our steel industry to take a long-term view and not fall prey to the temptation of seeking windfall gains from market manipulation in a period of excess demand,” Singh told a distinguished gathering on the occasion of

Tata Steel’s centenary celebrations.

He said the economy would continue to grow and the demand for steel would continue to rise.

Obliquely hinting at the Rs 5,000 per tonne raw material surcharge imposed by some private sector steelmakers excluding Tata Steel, which has added to the concerns of a government grappling with a 7.2% inflation, the prime minister said: “Industry and trade must eschew short-term gains that hurt consumers and disrupt the stability of the process of economic growth.”

Praising Tata Steel for its record of corporate social responsibility and wishing it another 100 years of progress and prosperity as the “best was yet to come” for it, Singh said the steel major should continue to provide leadership on all fronts as it “can show the way forward in deploying corporate power for public interest”.

Referring to his meeting with Lakshmi N Mittal, the prime minister said that the private sector could benefit in the long run if it also became a partner in social development, especially in less developed regions like Jharkhand.

“There’s a lot large companies can do to improve the welfare of the wider community of their stakeholders, even as they reward their shareholders,” he said, adding that the Jharkhand government needed to pay more attention to development as the state needed investment in education, in better health care, in rural infrastructure and in urban development, among other things.

Singh, who came here from Bokaro accompanied by Union steel minister Ram Vilas Paswan, minister of state for IT and telecommunications Jyodiraditya Scindia and Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda, planted a banyan sapling at the start of his 40-minute programme, much the same way that the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had done in 1957 to mark Tata Steel’s golden jubilee.

Scindia, the new minister of state for IT and telecommunications, later released a Rs 5 postal stamp to mark 100 years of Tata Steel.