Public sector miner NMDC, which has proposed an outlay of INR 1,200 crore for overseas acquisitions during the current financial year, believes that this is the right time to go for shopping. The acquisitions are proposed to be made partly through International Coal Ventures Limited and partly on its own.

The company is also hopeful that one are more assets would get finalized by the end of the current fiscal as ICVL has been carrying out due diligence of 4 to 5 assets of metal grade coal with size of reserves ranging from 50 to 500 million tonnes. Metal grade coal reserves are mostly available in Australia, Mozambique, USA and Canada.

Mr CS Verma chairman of the Steel Authority of India Limited who also holds additional charge of NMDC as its CMD said “These are very opportune times as international coal prices have come down by 40% to 50% and with the result the market capitalisation of the leading coal companies has shrunk. This is the right time to acquire the assets overseas because of the view that beyond a level prices can not go down, though it is difficult to say whether the price have bottomed out,.”

According to Mr Verma, the evaluation of assets through ICVL are at a fairly advanced stage and negotiations with the owners of these assets are also parallelly on.

Source - PTI

(www.steelguru.com)