The demand for steel has gone up exponentially and along with that the demand for raw materials like iron ore. In fact, a good reserve is virtually worth its weight in gold like the reserves bagged in Armenia by a joint venture between NMDC and Spice Energy. The current iron ore reserve with the state owned National Mineral Development Corporation is over a billion tonnes. Now that figure is all set to go up by a huge 700 million tonnes because of this joint venture.