PTI reported that Indian steel ministry is of the view that India will have to import iron ore in the immediate future to meet significantly increasing demand from domestic companies.

The Steel Ministry has said in a recent presentation to the Planning Commission that "With many projects in the pipeline, both brownfield and greenfield expansion of steel capacity, iron ore requirement will increase significantly leading to imports of iron ore in near future.”

The Ministry in its mid year plan review has identified iron ore availability as one of the challenges to achieve the steel production target of 300 million tonnes per annum by 2025.

With current production capacity of around 90 million tonnes per annum, India needs at least 140 million tonnes iron ore to meet its need. It requires 1.5 to 1.6 million tonnes iron ore to produce one million tonne of steel.

It said that "Domestic requirement of iron ore is increasing with the capacity addition in steel production. Between the 2008-09 and 2012-13 period the demand for iron ore has gone up from 87.4 million tonnes to 124.8 million tonnes.”

India, the world's fourth largest producer of steel after China, Japan and the US, had produced 78.31 million tonnes steel during 2012-13. It is likely to slightly inch up in current fiscal During the January-October period of the current year India produced 66 38 million tonnes steel.

The Steel Ministry also said iron ore production has come down from 213 million tonnes in 2008-09 to 136 million tonnes 2012-13 due to ban on mining in Karnataka and sharp fall in production in Odisha.

The ministry added that "It would require sufficient time for 200 million tonnes plus production (of iron ore).”