New Delhi/Raipur, Aug 4 : Mining major NMDC, India's largest iron ore producer and a diversified Navaratna PSU, recorded a sharp rise in its overall production and sales in July as compared to the corresponding period last year. During this period, despite the current uncertain situation due to Covid-19, NMDC has been able to achieve excellent physical performance through its continual push towards higher volumes which saw production of 2.19 MT and sales of 2.57 MT that grew by 13 per cent and 7 per cent over the corresponding period last year, respectively. In July 2020, the Chhattisgarh projects registered a production of 1.56 million tonnes as compared to the total production of 1.16 million tonnes in the corresponding month of July last year, an increase of 35 per cent. NMDC also achieved record sales in July 2020 by selling 1.90 million tonnes of iron ore in July 2020 against 1.60 million tonnes in July 2019, which is 20 per cent higher than the previous year. NMDC Chairman-cum-Managing Director Sumit Deb said: "The last few months have been quite challenging for the entire industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic situation impacting the performance of all major producers. However, this challenge was treated as an opportunity by us to accelerate our efforts towards stabilising the production and continuously improving our production processes. Going forward, NMDC will strive to maximise cost efficiencies to improve its bottom-line." /IANS