They are also offering easy long-term credit facilities and free transportation to sell their products, according to a major iron foundry owner in Howrah.

``Pig iron prices have nosedived due to oversupply and lack of demand from the traditional consumers. The buyers can get pig iron at much less than the officially-quoted prices now.''

Prices are now fixed over negotiation between the buyers and sellers, ignoring the official market prices. So there is no parity of rates persisting in the market for the common grade of pig iron, said the foundryman.

Indicative prices of pig iron as compiled by Indian Foundry Association reveal that as on July 1, 1999, Iisco, a major pig iron manufacturer, increased its rebate to Rs 1100 pertonne from the pre-July rebate of Rs 700.

Following the increase in the rate of rebate, Iisco's rate for LM 1&2 stood at Rs 6050 a tonne from the officially quoted rate of Rs 7150 a tonne and for LM-3 and Iisco SPL grades, prices stood at Rs 5700 and Rs 5650 per tonne respectively. All rates are exclusive of tax and excise duty.

Tata Metalic slashed its foudry grade pig iron prices to Rs 6200 a tonne from previous rate of Rs 6425 a tonne excluding sales tax and excise duties.

Kalinga Iron Works fixed the rates of its three different grades, namely SP grade, LM grade-1 and grade-2 at a price of Rs 7100 per tonne including sales tax.

The prices of these three grades were Rs 7600, 7400, and Rs 7,100 per tonne respectively last month without sales tax and excise duty.

Kajaria Iron's Durgapur unit cut its prices of foundry grade pig iron by Rs 100 a tonne to Rs 6100 a tonne.

The Durgapur Steel offered its mixed prime grade pig iron at a discounted rate of Rs 5200 a tonne as compared to previous priceof Rs 5450 per tonne. Bokaro Steel, however, increased the price to Rs 5700 per tonne for its grade A-1 and A-2 pig iron.

According to Shantilal Atta, owner of Atta Iron Foundry, Bokaro is showing little interest to manufacture pig iron at present as they have given much emphasis on steel production.

Beside the rates quoted, companies are offering various facilities including further discount when the purchases are of heavy quantity.

The main reason for this sluggish situation in pig iron is the steady decline in the offtake by the cast iron foundries in the country. In West Bengal alone, the production of cast iron including engineering goods, construction and household items have registered a fall by around 40 per cent during the recent time, stated Atta.

The annual production of cast iron in West Bengal is between 1.70 lakh tonnes and 1.80 lakh tonnes and consumption of pig iron is around 2 lakh tonnes.

The recession-hit engineering sector has reduced its offtake and railways has also stoppedbuying cast iron products for the last three years.

There was a big market for cast iron cooking wares and pipes and fittings but have gradually been replaced by stainless steel utensils and polymers products.

The cast iron industry found a fair market in foreign countries last year which helped industry to a great extent but the overseas enquiries for cast iron products during last four months are not encouraging, Atta said.