India: ‘Steel industry to reach a growth rate of 8% in 3 yrs’

11th sept

The domestic steel industry is expected to reach a growth rate of 8 per cent in 3 years, from 6 per cent at present, following various steps taken by the government, a senior official has said.

These measures have already helped some major steel producers return into black as far as operating profits are concerned, steel Joint Secretary Syedain Abbasi told PTI.

“Right now, the steel industry is growing at around 5-6 per cent. We took a lot of measures to boost the domestic steel industry,” he said.

“The government has ensured that unfair means like dumping are not encouraged. Now, as most of the bottlenecks have been removed, in next 3 years we should see a significant growth which can reach to 8 per cent,” he said.

The steel industry, facing sluggish global demand for the last three years, was also hit by cheap imports. Further, because of Goods and Services Tax (GST), a lot of people stopped keeping stocks as they were not sure of the impact of the new tax regime, he added.

“The industry has geared up to the challenges. Exports which were stagnating or had shrunken, doubled in 2016-17,” he said.

The imports also fell significantly, he added.

As per the Joint Plant Committee’s report, export of total finished steel was up by 102.1 per cent at 8.244 MT in 2016-17 as against 4.079 MT a year-ago.

The import of total finished steel fell by 36.6 per cent to 7.427 MT in 2016-17, from 11.712 MT in the preceding fiscal. On May 3, the Union Cabinet approved a new National Steel Policy that aims to achieve steelmaking capacity of 300 million tonnes by 2030 with an additional investment of Rs 10 lakh crore.

It also approved another policy to promote the use of domestic steel products in government organisations. Last month, India imposed anti-dumping duty on tempered glass, used for protecting mobile phone screens, from China for five years to protect the domestic industry from below- cost imports.

Recently, the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) has also recommended the anti-dumping duty on imports of “colour coated/pre-painted flat products of alloy or non-alloy steel” from China and European Union.

Source: PTI