In a bid to further privatise airports across the country, the Ministry of Civil Aviation will present its proposal on the matter before the Union Cabinet on Wednesday.
“We are going to the Cabinet tomorrow for further airport privatisation. We have got many more airports lined up, dozens of them, and the 100 new airports we will build in the decade between now and 2030,” Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said today.
He was speaking at a Webinar on ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat: Fostering Steel Usage in Housing & Construction and Aviation Sector.”
Aviation is one of the worse affected sectors due to the outbreak of the pandemic.
In September 2019, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) had recommended privatisation of the airports in Amritsar, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Indore, Raipur and Trichy to the Civil Aviation Ministry.
Further, as the Covid-19 induced nationwide lockdown highlighted the poor housing arrangement for migrant labourers in urban regions, Dharmendra Pradhan, the Minister of Steel & Petroleum and Natural Gas today appealed to industry stakeholders to partner with the government in low-cost housing in these regions.
Pradhan was speaking as the chief guest at the webinar.
While the government has set a target of providing one lakh low-cost houses, the industry should build many more steel-intensive, low-cost houses which will be model for others to emulate, said Pradhan.
Meanwhile, Seshagiri Rao, joint managing director and group chief financial officer at Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Steel highlighted that while domestic steel producers have made steel lighter, stronger and heat resistant and now working towards making it anti-bacterial, the problem is lack of awareness among consumers about the capability of this commodity.
“There is no other material that can match steel in terms of toughness, weight-and-strength ratio , durability, elasticity and ductility. Also, usage of steel reduces the time of construction by 30 per cent of the overall project cycle,” informed Rao.
Quoting a recent study conducted by Ipsos, a global market research and public opinion specialist, Rao said, “only 36 percent of Indian respondents recollected steel as first recall of construction material, while Chinese had 62 percent respondents for steel as first recall. This study shows that steel intensity and its usage needs a push in Indian market.”
Currently, India has an installed steel capacity of 140 million tonne and is expected to go to 300 million tonne by 2030. The commodity can contribute strongly to build a 5 trillion economy as it can be used in construction and infrastructure, where most of the steel produced gets used.
Steel consumption, in construction and infrastructure sector, stands at approximately 60 million tonne of total 100 million tonne demand in India.
As per the National Steel Policy, steel consumption is expected to rise to 135 million tonnes by 2030.