NEW DELHI, July 1: Steel Authority of India (SAIL) is planning to prune its capital expenditure of Rs 15,000 crore by 10 per cent for the Ninth Plan. "We want to cut 10 per cent across-the-board and even if we cut on the capital expenditure, we should be able to achieve the same targets," SAIL chairman-cum-managing Arvind Pande said.

He said out of the Rs 15,000-crore, "Some investments were desirable and some essential", indicating that some of the investments which are not very essential may be pruned.

In the first year of the Ninth Plan, SAIL was planning to cut investment expenditure by about Rs 700 crore, he said. SAIL had planned to invest about Rs 2,700 crore in the current fiscal, which has been scaled down to Rs 2,000 crore in view of the lower internal accruals last year.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.