UPA II Coming Alive

After a long wait, the country saw some bold policy interventions from the UPA government today (14 Sept 2012). These measures came on top of yesterday's decision to hike the diesel price by Rs 5 and limit the subsidised LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) cylinders to six per year, per family.

To begin with, the government decided to revive the policy to allow 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail. The decision earlier passed in November 2011 was put on the back burner following stiff opposition from the allies. This time it has played safe by giving state governments right to implement the policy or not in their territories. The ruling Trinamool government in West Bengal was the first to say no to the policy. MNCs like WalMart of the USA, Carrefour of France and Metro of Germany are the major immediate beneficiaries.

Heeding to the long standing demand of a section of Indian private aviation sector, the Cabinet decided to allow foreign airlines to hold up to 49 per cent of the equity in Indian airline companies. Kingfisher and Spicejet are the immediate beneficiaries. Both are currently debt stressed.

The UPA government also raised the FDI limit from 49 per cent to 74 per cent in Broadcasting, Cable and Dish TV services.

Better late than never. To meet the PSU disinvestment target of Rs 30,000 crore set for the fiscal 2012-13, the Cabinet gave green signal to disinvest 10 per cent stake in Oil India, 9.59 per cent in Hindustan Copper, 12.15 per cent in NALCO and 9.33 per cent in MMTC. In all, the government hopes to garner around Rs 15,000 crore from the sale of equities. Last fiscal, it managed to raise only Rs 14,000 crore against the target figure of Rs 40,000 crore.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) reacted with a bang 444 point rise (highest in the last 14 months) to the above measures. Expressing their satisfaction over the delayed reform measures, Indian industry captains wants the government to implement the same without any roll backs.

Indian Cement Industry - Victim of Policy Paralysis

Recently, the Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry stated in the Parliament that the country would see a capacity addition of 13.5 million tonne during the fiscal 2012-13. As of March 2012, the combined cement manufacturing capacity stood at 336.10 million tonne. Despite of the low capacity addition, the total capacity is expected to outstrip the demand. The slowdown witnessed in infrastructure building process coupled with the industry specific problems are expected to curtail the projex activities in this sector in the next couple of years.

According to the latest information available with ProjectsToday.com (a database monitoring over 50,000 projects envisaged across India) of the 209 cement projects lined across the country as at the beginning of March 2012, nearly three-fourth of them are delayed considerably. Most of these projects where announced three to four years ago and were expected to be commissioned by March 2015.

While the delays in getting government clearances, mining leases and the required land are the prominent reasons for the time overruns seen in the delayed cement projects, the current economic slowdown, reduced spending in the real estate sector and the slow pick up in the infrastructure projects has also forced cement manufacturers to go slow on their capacity addition/expansion programmes.

As of March 2012, of the 209 cement projects nearly 153 projects entailing a total investment of around Rs 1,04,000 crore and an aggregate capacity of 293 million tpa (tonne per annum) were facing time overruns of over two years. As a result of the overall slowdown in project implementation, the country will see capacity addition of 80 million tpa during 2012-2015 as against 117 million tpa of capacity addition happened during 2008-2011.

During FY13, as per the information available with ProjectsToday around 26 cement projects with an aggregate capacity of 37.38 million tpa will fructify. Of this, cement projects of ABG, ACC, Birla Corp, Indian Cements, Jaiprakash Associates, Reliance Cementation projects are of large size.

Cement projects by States

The top five states – Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Rajasthan together accounted for 70 per cent of the total envisaged capacity addition and around 71 per cent of the total projex.

Madhya Pradesh, which has the largest cement grade lime deposits in India, tops the state wise list with 39 projects having aggregate capacity of 81 million tpa. The limestone reserve in the state is estimated at 5,921 million tonne. Bhushan Steel, Emami Cements, Reliance Cementation, Sanghi Energy, Surya Global Cement and Visa Cement have lined up mega cement projects with capacities of 3 million tpa or more in the state.

The state also leads in terms of delayed cement projects. As of March 2012, 33 projects planned in the state are facing time overruns of over two years. Most of the projects for which MoU signed during the State’s Investor’s meet in 2010 have not reported much progress in implementation.