Naveen opposes centre’s Nalco disinvestment plan

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Friday requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to put further disinvestment in Nalco on hold.

Patnaik requested the Prime Minister to issue appropriate instructions to the Ministry of Mines to look into the matter to address the concerns of people of Odisha and employees of the company.

“Nalco has an excellent track record of performance and is poised for a robust growth in future,” said the Chief Minister in a letter to Modi.

He said to enhance the production capacity of Nalco and increase its profitability, the state government has reserved the Pottangi bauxite deposit over an area of 1738.04 hectares having an estimated resource of about 74 million tones of bauxite in favour of the national PSU.

The terms and conditions of the mining lease have also been issued by the state government in July last year, he added.

He also said the High Level Clearance Authority (HLCA) has recently approved two proposals of the company to expand the capacity of its smelter plant at Angul from 0.46 MTPA to 0.96 MTPA with an investment of Rs 10, 000 crores and enhance the alumina refinery capacity at Damanjodi from 2.275 MTPA to 3.275 MTPA with an investment of Rs 4357.20 crores.

“The disinvestment move will negatively impact the internal accruals of the company and may even hamper the smooth implementation of these important expansion projects,” said the Chief Minister.