By Abhishek Shanker

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Sesa Goa Ltd., India’s biggest iron-ore exporter, said fourth-quarter profit more than doubled on higher demand for the steelmaking raw material from China.

Group net income climbed to 12.2 billion rupees ($273 million) in the three months ended March 31 from 5.5 billion rupees a year earlier, the Panaji, Goa-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Net sales rose to 28.1 billion rupees from 15.8 billion rupees.

Sesa Goa, a unit of Vedanta Resources Plc, exports most of its production to steelmakers in China and Japan. China is the world’s largest buyer of iron ore and last year increased imports by 42 percent to a record 628 million metric tons. Chinese imports of the iron ore by sea could rise 47 percent this year from 2008 levels, Johannesburg-based Kumba Iron Ore Ltd. said on April 15.

Average cash prices of 62 percent iron-content ore delivered to Tianjin port in China jumped 87.5 percent to $131.6 a metric ton in the three months ended March 31, compared with $70.2 a ton a year ago, according to the Steel Index.

--Editors: Indranil Ghosh, Abhay Singh

To contact the reporter on this story: Abhishek Shanker in Mumbai at ashanker1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Hobbs at ahobbs4@bloomberg.net.

Sourced from: www.businessweek.com