JSW Steel Shelves $5.7 Billion West Bengal Plant

Mumbai: JSW Steel Ltd said on Tuesday it has "put on hold" building a steel plant in eastern India due to uncertainty in sourcing key raw materials such as iron ore and coal.

The country's third-largest steelmaker had planned to build a 10 million tonnes a year steel plant in West Bengal at an investment of Rs 35,000 crore ($5.66 billion).

The company cited a Supreme Court verdict in September that scrapped most coal extraction permits granted to companies over the last two decades, after ruling the allocation process as arbitrary and illegal.

"Besides iron ore linkage for this project, the recent cancellation of coal mining concessions has added further uncertainty," JSW said in a stock exchange filing.

Another steelmaker Jindal Steel and Power Ltd last month told Reuters it had shelved a $10 billion coal-to-diesel project after the court decision to scrap coalfields.

($1 = 61.88 rupees)

Copyright @ Thomson Reuters 2014