no xmas or new year presents, page-3

I haven't been checking news on IRL for sometime as I've totally lost patience with the company.
However it looks like IRL has been in the Indian news for all the WRONG reasons.


Australian miner India Resources drops new projects in India due to delays in securing mining leases

KOLKATA: India Resources, an India-focused Australian mining company , has abandoned plans to take up outsourced coal mining in captive blocks because of "inordinate delays" in securing mining leases.

The company, which is the only foreign contract miner to operate in India, had successfully restarted Hindustan Copper's Surda underground mines in 2007. "We are not pursuing any new coal project ," said Arvind Misra, managing director. "We have decided to get out of coal for the time being due to inordinate delays in getting mining leases." India had attracted several foreign companies such as Australia's Thiess and Polish mining major Kopex.

But experts say procedural delays and allegations of corruption in coal block allocations have dented the country's reputation. Earlier, the Perthbased company had floated a separate firm IRL Coal for pursuing its coal ventures in India. In October 2011, it bagged a Rs 1,200-crore contract to develop a captive coal mine of Prism Cement in Madhya Pradesh.

However , Prism did not provide matching guarantees in project's funding and terminated the agreement. It had also signed up six sponge iron makers in West Bengal for a contract mining project of Bankura DRI Mining Manufacturers Company, an SPV to mine the Biharinath coal block in the Raniganj coalfields. However, work could not begin as the company is yet to get the mining lease.