Schemes for Promotion of Research & Development in Indian Iron & Steel Sector

Introduction:

Research & Development in iron and steel sector in India is carried out mainly by the iron and steel plants themselves, National Research Laboratories, Academic Institutions etc. Though, marginal improvements in various areas of Iron & Steel technology have been realized, in overall terms, the initiatives can be considered to be meager. There is very little concern and achievement on basic research and development of indigenous technology to address the typical problems of the industry.

Of late several large steel plants have been setup in the country and they are gradually setting up relevant infrastructure for pursuing in house R&D to address their technological problems. However, most of these R&D projects have been limited to day to day problems of the company and were mainly directed towards incremental development. As such initiatives towards disruptive R&D for development of path breaking technology is limited. Investment in research and development in Indian steel industry in general has been limited. Actual investment as may be seen from the following table vary in the range of 0.15-0.25% of the sales turnover. This is much lower when compared with the R&D investment in some of the known steel plants abroad. This scenario needs to be reversed in the interest of the country.

R&D investment ( in Rs Cr and as % of turnover) in India

With the growth in production capacity in the country, there is an imperative need for the Indian Steel Industry to develop the new products / processes /technology to sustain in the competitive global economy. India has adequate raw material resources for the production of Iron and Steel and a comfortable market opportunity. What is needed is an inherent urge to achieve and add values for indigenous raw materials through R&D innovation and technology.

Ministry of Steel’s initiatives for promotion of R&D

In order to provide accelerated thrust on R&D, Ministry of Steel is encouraging Research and Development activities both in public and private steel sectors by providing financial assistance under the following two schemes (for further details click on the individual links):

(A) R&D with Steel Development Fund (SDF)

(B) R&D with Government Budgetary Support (GBS)

 Click here for Articles for the Successful Completed SDF assisted Products on R&D