DAYAL Steels Limited has invested in a $22 million steel mill factory in Ba with an official ground-breaking ceremony kicking off construction yesterday.
A subsidiary of the MR Dayal Group, the project will place the family-owned company as Fiji’s largest steel rolling mill from its Yalalevu base, under the directorship of Jay Dayal.
Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony, Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said the country needed to diversify its economic base instead of being overly dependent on tourism and sugar.
“If the cyclone (Winston) had hit all the major tourism areas, we would have been economically set back by 30 years,” he said, noting that an economic dependence on a select few industries heightened risk.
“So our job as Government is to mitigate that risk, to engender a sense of confidence in businesses to invest in other areas and this steel mill is a classic example of that; by exporting more, we get more foreign dollars, build up foreign reserves, create more jobs.”
Mill products will include automated wire mesh products and roofing division products, made to international standards, with the project partially stirred by Ba’s inclusion in Fiji’s tax-free region.