Indian iron and steel producers expecting healthy benefits

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30 January 2017

It has been less than a year since Indian steel industry has come out of a dismal position. NPA’s have reduced, exports have picked up and imports have slowed down.

A year back this would have been a long distant dream but today because of the incredible support from Ministry of Steel in form of MIP (minimum import price), Antidumping duties, Safeguard duties and other supporting measures, the dreams have started to take life.

Steel industry has come out of the clutches of massive imports including sub-standard ones from China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea which have been hurting their realizations and markets for so long. Now as the budget is approaching and support mechanisms like MIP have been removed and antidumping and safeguard have become more product or country centric, India needs to have robust and permanent support from the Government in form of duty relaxations and tax/production incentives which will allow the steel industry to take the benefit forward from here.

Indian steel industry is striving very hard to reduce cost of production and is waiting for demand to rise. It again depends on the budget outcome which could help the industry in form of a reduced import duty on coking coal and iron ore, export incentives on steel exports and ease in payable taxes.

Budget outcome is also important with respect to the recent demonetization move which nearly paralyzed the entire country’s purchasing power and industrial output.