Union Petroleum Minister requests Centre to restart infrastructure upgrade at Angul Aluminium Park

According to a recent report, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has urged the Centre to resume the project for upgradation of infrastructure at Angul Aluminium Park in Odisha.

He wrote to Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal seeking his personal intervention to direct the concerned officials to undertake the review of the work done so far.

In the letter, he has also requested the Centre to restart the upgradation work with a renewed focus on ironing out bottlenecks for expeditious completion of the project.

The letter states: "I also request to restore central assistance to Odisha aluminium cluster at Angul under MIIUS with the objective of enhancing of industrial competitiveness of the aluminium industry by providing quality infrastructure in the cluster which has the potential to become globally competitive."

The estimated cost for the project was INR 99.60 crore including a central grant of INR 33.44 crore.

On November 1, 2018, the project was decided to drop by the apex committee of the Modified Industrial Infrastructure Upgradation Scheme (MIIUS) in its meeting because the progress was slow.

The Union Minister also directed Angul Aluminium Park Private Limited (AAPPL), the implementing agency of the project, to refund the released central grant.