NEW DELHI, March 5: Mining giant Rio Tinto said on Monday it plans to invest $2 billion in an iron ore project in eastern India in what it said would be Australia’s “largest investment” in the South Asian nation.

Sam Walsh, chief of the Australia-based company’s global iron ore operations, said the project in the mineral-rich eastern state of Orissa would supply clients in India and abroad.

“This would be Australia’s largest investment in India,” Walsh told reporters after a meeting of Australian and Indian business leaders in New Delhi advising on ways to clinch a free trade deal between the two countries.

Walsh said he was unfazed by huge difficulties encountered by other metals companies in getting approval for projects in India that have rattled foreign investors eyeing the country.

“I am a very patient man,” said Walsh. “We will go through all the (legal) processes. We are already working with the local community.”

South Korean steel giant POSCO’s plans, announced in 2005, to build a plant in Orissa, have yet to be implemented in the face of wide opposition from locals campaigning to save farmland and forests.

Steelmaker ArcelorMittal, controlled by Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, has also been unable to acquire land for a proposed plant.

Industrialisation has been championed by India’s government as a way to drive growth and pull millions out of poverty.

But industrial projects have often created battlegrounds between local groups and companies.

“We would bring our environment and safety systems and obviously we would use local people,” Walsh said.

Walsh downplayed investor worries that Rio Tinto could face a global market iron ore glut with the economies of emerging market giants China and India both large minerals consumers slowing.—AFP