New Delhi: The country's third largest steel maker, JSW Steel, today said it would not go for further cut in production as it sees demand rising in the coming months even as it expects lower sales growth in FY 09.

"I do not see any further production cut. Demand for steel is coming up and prices are looking to stablise in the domestic market," JSW Steel Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Sajjan Jindal told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham conference.

The O P Jindal Group company, which had trimmed its output by 20 per cent earlier, said its steel mills would run at their full capacity from January next year.

"We will run our steel plants at full capacities from January. Next month itself the capacity would be increased by five per cent," he added.

JSW Steel, which recorded an 18 per cent growth in sales volume in the first six months of the fiscal, said it expects a 10-12 per cent growth in sales value and volume for 2008-09. The company had a revenue growth of about 30 per cent in the last fiscal.

Amid the global credit crisis, the company reiterated that it will take a call on commissioning of its enhanced production line (about 6.8 MTPA) at its Vijayanagar plant in December, but will go slow on further augmentation.

"We will take the decision for commissioning our 7 MTPA unit in December, which has been enhanced from 4 MTPA. We will go slow on further increasing the capacity of the Vijayanagar plant to 10 MTPA," he said.

Reacting to government's recent decision of imposing five per cent import duty on specified iron and steel products, Jindal, who is also the president of Assocham, said steel firms were expecting a higher tariff to protect the domestic industry against cheaper imports.

Source : PTI