Bhubaneswar, 5th Aug : Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) is all set to achieve highest ever production and sale with Chief Secretary Sri Aditya Prasad Padhi taking a review of its activities today. Sri Padhi visited the Corporation office today morning and reviewed its activities in the conference hall wherein Chairman OMC Sri Sanjaya Chopra along with Managing Director Sri Vineel Krishna outlined the issues and presented the updates for discussion. Target was set to achieve highest ever production of iron ore (8 million ton) during the current financial year. Chief Secretary Sri Padhi directed the engineers and officers of the department to adopt innovative methods for scaling up mining operations and business transactions.
Review revealed that beating the global market slowdown, OMC could sale around 7.7 million tons of iron ore during the financial year 2016-17 against the total sale of 4.5 million tons during 2015-16. The sale of iron ore up to 31st July of current year ( 2017-18) has crossed 2.14 million tons thereby recording an increase of 9% over the same period of last year. Similarly, in spite of the drastic fall in ferro-chrome price, OMC has started its business operation for sale of around 1 MT chromites during 2017-18 against 0.8 million ton of sale in last financial year. The sale value of this production is expected to be around Rs.2800 cr which also would be highest in comparison to last 5 years. The Corporation has scaled up its net profit to Rs.846 cr during the financial year 2016-17 after paying all taxes.
Available data show, that the Corporation has constantly enhanced its production of iron ore over last 5 years. In the year 2013-14 the total iron ore production was around 1.8 MT which increased to 3.1 MT during 2014-15, 6 MT during 2015-16 and further to 6.4 MT during the year 2016-17. Chief Secretary Sri Padhi advised the corporation to enhance its production to 8 MT during the current year. Target was set to produce around 3 MT of ore from Daitari, 2.6 MT from Gadhmardan and 2.4 MT from Kurmitar mines. Similarly, the target was set for enhancing the chromites production up to 1.16 million tons from the mines like south Kaliapani, Sukurangi and Bangur.
MD Sri Krishna appraised that during the year 2015-16 the Corporation paid Rs.1415 cr to Govt towards royalty, DMF, NMET, dividend, sales tax and income tax. During the year 2016-17 OMC paid Rs 1548 cr to Govt under the same heads. In the 1st quarter of the current year OMC has already paid Rs 300 cr towards royalty, dividend and sales tax. Sri Krishna also mentioned that work plan has been set to ramp up production to 20 MT by the year 2019-20.
In another significant development OMC has set up Odisha Mineral Exploration Corporation Ltd (OMECL) as a 100% subsidiary of OMC. The corporation will conduct exploration activities for new mining sites. The scope of the exploration work has been listed out by a committee headed by Director of Mines. Four manganese blocks in Bolangir, 4 bauxite blocks in Rayagada, 7 iron ore blocks in Khandadhar, 1 iron ore block in Thakurani-A have been identified for exploration through OMECL.
The matters relating to IT applications in business re-engineering, online file processing, CCTV surveillance in mining sites and head office, biometric attendance at regional offices and mine offices with web based real time reporting, standardized tender schedule for raising contracts, preparation of the purchase & procurement manual, sale & marketing policy, pricing policy for ores etc were reviewed in the meeting.
Principal Secretary Steel & Mines Sri Raj Kumar Sharma, Principal Secretary Industry Sri Sanjeeb Chopra, MD OMC Sri Vineel Krishna, Chief General Manager Sri Nrusingha Charan Sahoo, AGM Sri Abhiram Sahoo along with senior officers, mining engineers, geologists and technical experts of MOC participated in the discussions.
