SAIL to cut costs, renegotiate contracts to tackle coronavirus impact

In a letter to plant and unit heads, SAIL said the slowdown has affected offtake since the beginning of March.

Moneycontrol News

April 23, 2020 / 12:54 PM IST

live

bselive
nselive

Volume

Todays L/H

Steel Authority of India (SAIL) is considering renegotiating contracts and purchase orders to tide over the coronavirus crisis, Business Standard reported.

SAIL has written to plant heads for a temporary solution, which will not be needed once commodity sales pick up. “There is a huge demand waiting,” the letter said.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

The public sector enterprise (PSE) has record-high inventory due to the demand slump since March. Saleable inventory stands at over 2 million tonne (mt), with another 0.8 mt under process. This even after SAIL is operating at 50 percent capacity, the paper added.

“This inventory will increase as production continues while sales are weak. A large amount of money is blocked in these inventories. It is requested that further production may kindly be regulated and preferably only such grades as the market is willing to absorb should be produced,” the letter mentioned.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show