JSW Steel Ltd has decided to strengthen its focus on rural market.

To get deeper into the rural market, Mr. Sajjan Jindal, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of JSW Steels, said that the company, which has already opened 60 retail outlets through franchisee route, is planning to take it upto 600 outlets allover India by the next two years.

While talking to media persons at a seminar organized by NMDC in Hyderabad on Monday, Mr. Sajjan said that the company’s overall exports figure accounted for 40% of its production.

He said that downturn was safe time to make investments as well as expansion as the machinery vendors would provide the equipment at lesser costs and a number of incentives are on offer.

He said that the company’s sales would double this month at six lakh tonnes as opposed to the corresponding period last year.

Mr. Jindal also said that sales of the company will probably double to six lakh tonnes during the existing month as compared to the same period of the last year.

JSW completed raising yearly capacity to 6.8 million tons in Feb 2009 from 3.8 million tons.

The company’s steel mills would work to their fullest capacity until June, as production orders were already in line.

Steel prices, which declined to $450 per tonne from $1200 per tonne in the international market, saw hefty demand in rural India. It saw a steady growth of 3 to 4 percent in agriculture segment, especially in the housing sector.

Mr. Jindal said that the long-term annual coking coal prices might fall to below $100 million per tonne by the coming month.

He said that the company got all the approvals regarding aluminium facility in Andhra Pradesh and was looking to sign a contract with the Government for bauxite mining.

Steel Secretary P.K. Rastogi said that the country would be capable of achieving production increase to 115-120 million tonnes from the existing 60 million tonnes by 2011-12.

Mr. Jindal said that the administration and the industry should jointly rehabilitate the one lakh families at Jharia in order to tap the coking coal so that its import could be avoided.