The 18th Plant Level Committee Meeting with Local Medium and Small Scale Enterprises was held in RINL VSP on September 22nd 2011 in the august presence of CMD, directors, senior officials of RINL VSP and Commissioner (Industries), state government officials and representatives of local small scale industries.

Mr AP Choudhary CMD of RINL in his opening remarks asserted that RINL VSP has already commenced the commissioning activities for its brown field expansion costing around INR 12,000 crores to almost doubling its capacity to 6.3 million tonnes of liquid steel and another INR 7000 crores is also being invested towards modernization and rejuvenation of the existing units to increase the capacity to 7.3 million tonnes per annum and that there exists plenty of opportunity to local small scale industries in and around Visakhapatnam to reap the benefits.

A number of issues relating to the growth of local SMEs were discussed. Various Vendors who participated requested to have regular meetings at least once in a year. Mr Choudhary appreciated their concern and agreed to hold the meeting once in a year. The last meeting was held in 2007.

Mr Karikal Valevar, IAS, Commissioner (industries), government of Andhra Pradesh who was chief guest complimented RINL VSP for the positive response suggested to form a sub committee to go into detail of various issues for further necessary action by RINL VSP and State Government.

Mr TK Chand, director (Commercial) requested the commissioner to explore the possibility of concessions like tax holiday for the products being rolled out from the expansion as is being given to JSW by Karnataka government as RINL VSP does not have captive mines and to improve the bottom line of RINL VSP which would in turn facilitate RINL VSP to pass on some concessions to local small scale industries.