Financial Express reported that Indian government has put on hold its plan to divest of Steel Authority of India Limited’s Durgapur based loss making unit Alloy Steel Plant. FE report said that as per a steel ministry note, “Meeting of the inter-ministerial group under the chairmanship of secretary Dipam, regarding disinvestment of two units of SAIL’s Salem based Salem Steel Plant and Bhadrawati based Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Plant was held on October 9, where issues involved in finalisation of transaction documents for strategic disinvestment of these SAIL units were considered. But the ministry note is silent on ASP.”

The Cabinet gave it’s in principle approval in October 2016 for strategic disinvestment of all the three units. On February 1, 2018, SAIL issued notice seeking expression of interest for disinvestment, but EoIs received did not meet the specified eligibility criteria. Fresh process was initiated and revised EoIs for ASP, VISP and SSP were issued in 2019, but nothing concrete came out of the process since then. These three units reported a combined pre-tax loss of INR 500 crore last fiscal. ASP contributed around INR 100 crore into the loss pile.