New Delhi The ongoing mining mess in Goa has started hitting the margins of mining companies.

Sesa Goa, the country’s largest producer of iron ore, has already reported 14% drop in its net sales to R790 crore in the second quarter this financial year from R1,125 crore in the same quarter in the last financial year.

Stumped by political opposition to letting private companies into commercial coal mining, the government has found a way to achieve almost the same without having to face Parliament. It is planning to allot captive coal blocks to private miners like BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Sesa Goa on the condition that these firms have tied up with approved end users for supply.

The Orissa government and Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) are working out a compromise formula for the pricing of iron ore mined from the state. The move, in all likelihood, would lead to an increase in the prices of the mineral. The state government had earlier flayed the IBM’s methodology for pricing the ore, saying there was gross under-reporting of the actual market value of the mineral by it, leading to a notional loss to the state exchequer.

New Delhi The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has asked the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to create a bank of ready-to-award projects of 10,000 km of national highways.
It has told the NHAI to identify stretches and prepare detailed project reports (DPRs) for them by the year-end. This will be an additional obligation on the authority, which anyway has to meet its recently-revised annual target of awarding 8,000 km projects.

Public sector steel major SAIL has dropped its plan to set up a stainless steel special economic zone (SEZ) at Salem in Tamil Nadu. Instead, the company has decided to set up a wind energy plant to meet its renewable energy requirement.
The government-owned steel major has already invited the expression of interests (EoIs) from private energy firms to develop the wind energy unit, according to sources privy to the development.