ET reported that JSW Bengal Steel venture appears to have been relegated to the back burner.

As per reports, JSW Group has reportedly asked Mr Biswadip Gupta, CEO of JSW for the Bengal project, to focus his energies on the group’s core steel businesses outside West Bengal in locations like Bellary, Karnataka.

The report cited Mr Gupta as saying that "I will now be shuttling between Bellary and Kolkata."

He however added that "The group has already invested INR 250 crore into the project. We have also completed acquisition of 4300 acres at Salboni. We are now building the boundary wall."

The report added that “The ongoing global financial crisis that led to funds drying up for Greenfield projects, took a heavy toll on the prospects of the new venture. Insiders, however, hinted that with banks refusing to extend loans to new projects, there is little chance of any progress on the steel venture at least for the next 1 year.”

JSW Bengal was incorporated as a JV company to set up a 10 million tonne at Salboni in West Midnapore with the Sajjan Jindal Group holding 89% and the remaining 11% being held by the West Bengal government. It was planning to set up the project in phases with a 3 million tonne capacity plant to come up initially. On November 2nd 2008, the foundation stone laying ceremony for the project was attended by the chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the then steel minister Mr Ram Vilas Paswan.

(Sourced from Economic Times)