Bhubaneswar: The utilization of money collected for the District Mineral Fund (DMF) will soon be utilized for the development of the districts affected by mining activities, informed Steel and Mines Secretary RK Sharma at the Minerals and Metals Odisha Conclave 2016 organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce, Odisha Chapter here today.
“We have started collecting funds and are hopeful to garner funds at the specified rate for the DMF. We will soon put the funds into use for the development of the concerned districts. Till now we have collected around Rs 90 cr from four districts, namely, Angul, Keonjhar, Sundergarh and Jajpur. Collection is in progress in other districts as well,” said Sharma.
The annual conclave discussed steps taken for the development of the mining and steel industry in the State.
“The policies of the state government have been extremely useful and over the past two years there has been a noticeable change in various aspects like transportation and auctions. Odisha became the first state to auction a mine under the new rules and we have urged the government to put more mines for auction,” said member of ICC Odisha Chapter member Manish Kharbanda.
“We informed the state government that if we want to boost steel production we need to hold discussions together to ease bottlenecks like getting approvals. Moreover, logistics is also very costly and the state government should bring the industry and the transporters together to find a feasible solution,” said Mesco Steel MD, Rita Singh.