Durgapur, June 14: Durgapur Steel Plant and Alloy Steel Plant here would be renovated and modernised at Rs 700 crore, Union steel, chemicals and fertiliser minister Ram Vilas Paswan said today.

On a visit to the steel township, Paswan said DSP made a profit of Rs 81 crore in the last fiscal and ASP incurred a loss of Rs 172 crore. “After a long gap, the DSP has made a profit. We’ll invest a major portion of the Rs 700 crore in DSP. We will also invest in ASP, though it suffered a loss,” he told a news conference.

From the package, Rs 660 crore will be spent to upgrade DSP. Paswan said Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) will set up a bloom caster unit at Rs 270 crore. The project, which is part of the renovation and modernisation programme, will be kicked off in September 2005.

“Another wire rod mill unit will be set up at a cost of Rs 300 crore during the renovation. The remaining Rs 90 crore will be invested in development programmes in DSP,” he said. Rupees 40 crore will be spent to pull up ASP from losses.

Paswan said he was worried about the Alloy Steel Plant’s bottomline. “We are concerned. But despite the loss, ASP will not be sold out or closed,” he added.

The minister announced a reward of Rs 1,000 for each SAIL employee as the steel major had made a profit of Rs 2,600 crore last year. “SAIL employees will get the reward with the Puja and Diwali bonus for working hard and making the company profitable. The DSP and ASP employees will get the reward during Durga puja while others will get it during Diwali.”

SAIL now has 132,000 employees in steel plants across the country.

The DSP-owned 650-bed hospital here will be upgraded and new equipment installed as part of the package.

Referring to growing requirement of coal to keep its boilers and blast furnaces burning, Paswan said SAIL was ready to collaborate with Coal India Limited to dig out more coal by creating mines in untapped areas of Jharkhand, Bihar and Bengal.

Coal India would do the mining but SAIL will pitch in with advice on modern lifting techniques, the minister said.

“I will hold a meeting with Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda tomorrow on how coal could be mined in the untapped areas. When I was the coal minister, I learnt there was a huge underground coal stock that could not be tapped because of (some) technical problem. I will also meet the chief ministers of the two other states (Bengal and Bihar),” Paswan said.