for sail chairmanc s verma there is no slowdown as the giant staterun steel firm plots its expansion programme keeping in view the huge potential of steel demand in the country in an interview verma said he has not seen any steel company shelving its capex plans and hectic expansion was on excerpts growth has slowed and there is slowdown in construction how are you seeing steel demand in india in the first 10 months of this year the production is 536 million tonnes with a growth of 36 and growth in demand is 47 india cannot remain isolated from what is happening elsewhere we have been impacted but the impact is not so much as the impact in other global economies the slowdown had given us an opportunity to build on our infrastructure and drive demand have we failed to do that i will not agree with that india is not working in isolation we could have done more we have to see the demand scenario we have to see the consumption scenario we have to see that the inputs are made available we have to see the spending pattern of the government in absolute terms there was more much scope but still we have done far better than the economies in europe or other parts of the world the government is putting pressure on psus to invest how do you see that pressure or no pressure we have our 14 billion capex plan this capex was already approved by the board but it is not as if we are doing it because the government is putting pressure are clearances affecting your expansion plans our land bank is much more than compared to the leading real estate companies in india in the four plants we have a land bank of 35000 acres each we have no problems on the land acquisition side we have captive iron ore mines there are issues regarding environment approvals we are complying with the rules but they have not come in the way as hurdles for our expansion what about acquisition of coal mines we are acquiring we have a separate vehicle for that icvl through that we are carrying out due diligence of a few assets it is good that it has not taken off because we could not have done hostile acquisition when coal prices were unrealistic and prevailing at 300350 per tonne coal prices have reached realistic levels now about 100130 a tonne we have already signed a number of nondisclosure agreements geographically the locations where we are doing our due diligence are australia mozambique what about the posco joint venture there is no further progress on the posco joint venture we are still continuing our discussions our effort is continuing we are still optimistic that something should happen what are the stumbling blocks all the commercial terms by and large have been finalized there are some shareholding pattern issues and some other minor issues which i think in due course