PM personally scanning progress on Posco project: Sharma

Commerce and industries minister Anand Sharma said today that India will again review the South Korean steelmaker POSCO's planned investment of $12 billion (Rs64,000 crore) in an integrated steel project in Odisha, which has been held up for years over land acquisition and environmental issues.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is personally monitoring the progress of the project, Sharma assured his South Korean counterpart Sukwoo Hong at a meeting between the two sides organised by a trade body.

The POSCO project is slated to be the single-biggest foreign direct investment in India; but it has been unable to progress due to protests from local farmers and fishermen.

Hong said his country was looking at the POSCO project as a key determinant for its future plans in India. In fact the whole world was keenly watching how the company was treated, the Korean minister added.

The two ministers met at a partnership conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, to discuss bilateral trade.

The National Green Tribunal, a body directly reporting to the Supreme Court, had in March 2012 directed the ministry of environment and forests to review the environment clearance accorded by it to the project, with specific reference to the observations and objections raised by earlier review committees.