NMDC Limited is expecting the demerger of its 3 million tonne per annum capacity steel plant being set up in Chhattisgarh to be completed by the third quarter of the current fiscal, a senior official of the state-owned miner has said.

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Amitava Mukherjee, Director (Finance), NMDC in a recently held earnings call said the Board of Directors of the company is expected to give its approval to the draft demerger scheme by July 31 and once that happens, then it will be taken to SEBI and Competition Commission of India for necessary approvals.

"This is the process after the Board approval could take anything between 100 to 160 days, depending on how much time SEBI takes, how much time MCA other people take. So from -- if I start from August 1, so it could be anything between 100 days from August to 160 days from August," he said replying to a query on the timelines for demerger of the steel plant.

Sumit Deb, CMD of the firm said the commissioning of the steel plant would be during the third quarter. Deb said the total capital expenditure for the current financial year is around Rs 3,700 crore out of which Rs 1,500 crore will be spent on the steel plant. Iron ore pricing is looking good and NMDC is planning to ramp up production to 44 million tonne in FY22, Deb said.

NMDC produced 34.15 million tonne and sold 33.25 million tonne of iron ore during the financial year 2020-21. This is an 8 percent growth in production and 6 percent in sales from the 31.49 million tonne produced and 31.51 million tonne sold during FY 2019-20.

NMDC is planning to set up a 6 million tonne capacity pellet plant in Visakhapatnam, he further said.