National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC)

About National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC)

• Incorporated in 1958 as a Government of India public enterprise, NMDC is India’s largest producer of iron ore.
• It is a Navratna public-sector enterprise under the administrative control of the Ministry of Steel.
• The company is engaged in the exploration of a range of minerals, including iron ore, copper, rock phosphate, lime stone, dolomite, gypsum, bentonite, magnesite, diamond, tin, tungsten, graphite, and beach sands.
• It owns and operates highly mechanized iron ore mines in Chhattisgarh and Karnataka.
• It also operates the only mechanized diamond mine in India at Panna, Madhya Pradesh.
• NMDC is considered to be one of the low-cost producers of iron ore in the world.
• The company sells most of their high-grade iron ore production to the Indian domestic steel market, primarily pursuant to long-term sales contracts.
• The registered office is located in the city of Hyderabad, Telangana.

Q1) What is Navratna status?

The government categorises all Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) into three categories, namely Maharatna, Navratna, and Miniratna. To get Navratna status, the PSU should be a Miniratna-I, Schedule 'A' company, should have obtained an 'excellent' or 'very good' MoU rating in three of the last five years, and must have a composite score of 60 in six performance indicators.For a company to achieve Navratna status, it must report a net profit of more than Rs 5,000 crore for three consecutive years, and maintain an average annual turnover of Rs 25,000 crore for three years, or have an annual average net worth of over Rs 15,000 crore for three years.