Latest news | KNIA urges Odisha government to lower floor price for chrome ore at auction
Jajpur (Odisha), May 15 (PTI) The state’s downstream chrome ore processors urged the government to lower the floor price for chrome ore at auctions held by Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC) last month in due to the drop in the price of ferrochrome.
The Kalinga Nagar Industries Association (KNIA), a representative body of mineral processors and ferrochrome producers, wrote a letter to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik asking him to remove the WTO’s “arbitrary formula” to calculate the floor price of chromium ore which effectively increased the price of chromium ore.
KNIA claimed that the state’s ferrochrome industries had suffered from the high floor price for chromium ore set by the WTO.
“Due to the extremely high and arbitrary floor price for chromium ore set by WTO, the state-owned company’s electronic auctions had a very poor response and Odisha’s ferrochrome industries, which are WTO LTL buyers , suffer, “said KNIA President PL Kandoi in his letter.
He claimed that in the electronic auction on April 23, 2021, only 14,800 tonnes of chromium ore out of 35,100 tonnes were sold due to a very high floor price. Likewise, the previous electronic auctions of January 1, 2021, February 10, 2021, and March 15, 2021 also had a very low response rate for the same reason.
KNIA had previously asked the WTO to reduce the floor price formula for chromium ore from 13.5% to 12.65% of the price of chromium.
WTO fixed the floor price for chromium ore based on a formula at 13.5 percent of the price of ferro chromium with a correction factor. On this basis, the floor price should have been Rs 13,457 per tonne for 48-50 grade chrome ore in electronic auctions.
However, WTO arbitrarily added an additional amount of Rs 3,070 per tonne to the formula for calculating the floor price for chromium ore (or Rs. 16,527 per tonne), they said.
Although the WTO has not sold 100% of the amount of chromium ore through electronic auctions, it still applies such a high floor price to Odisha-based LTL (Long Term Linkage) buyers, have they asserted.
(This is an unedited, auto-generated story from the Syndicated News Feed, the staff at LatestLY may not have edited or edited the body of the content)