ISLAMABAD, July 31: The Engineering and Development Board (EDB) of the ministry of industries and production has prepared a draft of the long-term national Steel Policy to cover the widening demand and supply gap by achieving a production target of 15 million tons of steel by 2020.

The policy, to be finalised by August 15, is expected to be formally approved by the Economic Coordination Committee (EEC) of the cabinet by September.

A meeting of all the stakeholders was held on Thursday under the chairmanship of Asad Ilahi, chief executive officer (CEO) of EDB, who shared with them the draft national steel policy, which initially aimed at achieving 10 million tons steel production target by 2015 and then 15 million tons by 2020.

The meeting formed three separate committees to submit recommendations within one month on three issues, which include development of steel industry, mining and raw material for steel and sorting out tariff issues.

“This will be our third policy after the development of auto and trucking policies,” Asad told Dawn after the meeting.

Responding to a question he said the new national steel policy was needed because of the rising prices of iron ore, coal, coke, and the steel products. There were short supplies of major inputs due to monopolisation of resources as a result of mergers and acquisitions.

There was a widening demand and supply gap and the country was faced with spiralling prices in domestic market, he added.

He said that there was a need to make serious efforts to discover untapped resources. Dependence on imports would keep the steel sector exposed to price shocks, long lead time, high sea-freight, and logistic problems.

The committee on development of steel industry would deal with the issues like availability of inputs, finished products, devise a mechanism to stabilise prices, product certification, and devise a mechanism to implement and monitor the quality of product.

This committee would also frame a strategy for energy conservation in steel sector, create linkages between industry and academia and ensure the availability of skilled manpower and establishment of factory schools.

Similarly, the committee on tariff will deal with sales tax, multiple taxation, import valuation, import of raw material from neighbouring countries and the facilitation of development of infrastructure and captive power generation plants.

The committee on mining, leasing and development has been entrusted with the job of identification of iron ore and coal deposits, suitable for manufacturing of steel under the public private partnership programme.

The government has been told by the stakeholders that for achieving global competition in price of the steel, it was imperative to fully exploit the potential of available iron ore on priority basis. Presently, the only potential source of iron ore is Nokkundi having 50 million tons of total deposits.

The government was also informed that regional steel mills have to be established based on local iron ore at suitable places in Balochistan and in Punjab to achieve the target of 10 million tons by 2015.