A panel, comprising of Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), Tata Steel (TISCO), Essar Steel, Jindal Steel, Lloyds Steel and ISPAT Industries said the industry has decided not to roll back increase in prices of steel products.

Welcoming the notification issued by the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) for fixing reference price for various steel categories, JJ Irani, managing director, TISCO said that even now the prices were lower than what existed three years before.

"Only rebates are being recovered. We had offered huge rebates in view of cheap imports which had affected the bottomline of most of the producers," Irani said at a meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

SAIL chief Arvind Pande said thatreference price system was in line with the global trend to curb unfair trade practices detrimental to the interest of domestic industries. Asked whether this would lead to cartelisation, Pande said that in a regime of negotiated prices, where each producer has to negotiate price with the customer, question of cartelisation does not rise.

The international producers were dumping steel in India at very low prices compared to prices which existed in the country of its origin, he added.

The industry had demanded a level-playing field by way of assurance from the Government that prices of imported steel were equivalent to the domestic prices of those countries from where the steel was coming and if there was any gap, that should be bridged by way of fixing the reference price. The DGFT had recently fixed floor prices of Hot-rolled (HR) coil at $302 per tonne, HR sheet at $317, HR plates at $409 and Cold Rolled (CR) coils at $392 per tonne.

The landed price for HR coil, presently is Rs 17,655.53 per tonne atports against the selling price of Rs 14,100 per tonne (ex-works). Still there was a difference to the tune of Rs 3,555 per tonne, the producers said.

Pande said that SAIL was in touch with their customers and most of them had shown their willingness in picking the material at current prices.

All major steel producers were producing about seven million tonne of HR coil per annum. The meeting was attended by Ravi Ruia of Essar Steel, Vinod Mittal of ISPAT Industries, Sajjan Jindal of Jindal Iron and Steel and Rajesh Gupta of Lloyds Steel.