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Although India may be producing about 100m TPA of steel by 2015-2020, it is not yet clear whether the product mix has yet been settled. At the moment all the proposals are for cold-rolled or hot-rolled coils, implying that the car and white goods industries are the targets.

In other countries, about 25% of steel production tends to go to the construction sector in the shape of plates (‘flat products’), sections (‘long products’) and reinforcements for concrete.

Progressive demand for the Indian construction centre should be estimated and the planning commission advised. At the moment, apart from ‘rebars’, steel consumption in the construction sector is virtually zero.

The manufacturing, machinery and building products sectors, which need various kinds of alloys (eg. stainless steel), should declare their steel usage and should be monitored accordingly. Shipbuilding and offshore may also require heavy weldable structural steel plates and future demand should be properly calculated.

If steel production is raised by a 10.15% annual compound rate rather than the 7.3% figure currently slated then the 100m TPA target can be achieved by 2015 rather than 2020. There is no time to waste.