More than 30,000 job opportunities likely to open up in the district, which grabs a major chunk of the over Rs4 lakh crore investments announced at the two-day global event.
Bellary grabbed more than a quarter of the total investments promised at the two-day Global Investors Meet, which concluded here on Friday.
Steel companies committed to invest more than Rs1.2 lakh crore in the state.
Besides ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company, which announced an investment of Rs30,000 crore in a six MTPA (million tones per annum) steel plant, several other firms too expressed interest in putting in their money in the state’s mines.
The Brahmani Industries Karnataka Ltd proposed to set up a six-MTPA integrated steel plant with a captive power plant at a cost of Rs36,000 crore. State tourism minister G Janardhana Reddy's Brahmani’s project alone was expected to create 25,000 jobs.
One of the oldest players, JSW Steel revealed its plans to invest Rs15,131 crore to enhance its existing steel mill capacity to 16 MTPA from 10 MTPA, by setting up a 600 mw captive power plant. This would open up 6,000 job opportunities in Bellary district.
“It is the iron ore,” said KC Kondaiah, MLC, and a former member of parliament from Bellary, when asked about investors’ interest in that district.
Though the Reddy brothers’ political rival Kondaiah mentioned iron ore as the only factor that attracted steel magnets to Bellary, commissioner of industries Rajkumar Khatri added more to the list of attractions: Water, the recently announced Tadri port and a proposed gas-based power project.
The state’s mining policy, too, attracted investments, he added.
Industries minister Murgesh Nirani felt the new mining policy had helped Bellary in attracting investments. Though steel baron Lakshmi N Mittal said that there were still issues over mine land, the government had apparently identified ore heads for the ArcelorMittal project.
The cost of ore from self-owned mines was about one-tenth of market price. If own mine ore rate was Rs800 per tonne, it would be Rs5000 in the open market.
Bellary has been hiding huge iron ore deposits – between 2.5 billion tonne and four billion tonne. Sixty-five per cent of the iron ore wealth in that district was in the forested areas.
According to a survey by the Karnataka State Remote Sensing Applications Centre, the mining has been undertaken in 1,508 hectares. Though iron ore was also found in Orissa, Goa, and Jharkhand, Bellary's ore was considered of high grade with ferrous content of nearly 67% by proportion and weight. In other states, it ranged between 35% and 50%. The haematite ore (chemical composition: Fe2O3) suited to the making of steel as opposed to the magnetite (Fe3O4) ore found elsewhere.
Globally, the steel companies have been seeking access to mines to build plants as raw material costs soared with the economic recovery.
The state has been holding nearly 11% of India’s hematite iron ore. The deposits were in Bellary, where ArcelorMittal was planning its unit, and in Bagalkot, which Posco was planning to mine.
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