Even as a minimum import price (MIP) for the alloy is likely soon, steel minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Monday said that any move to rein in the rising imports would be taken keeping in mind the interest of all kinds of producers — large, medium and small.
“The Indian government is considering the MIP issue given the current state of affairs of the domestic steel industry. The commerce ministry is vetting the proposal now,” Tomar told FE. “The government is there to look after the benefits of all kinds of producers. We believe that if the big industries survive, then the small industries would survive and vice-versa. They play complementary role to each other,” he added.
The proposed move, which is an attempt to put a brake on burgeoning and cheaper steel imports from China, Japan and Korea, would fix a minimum import price on a host of products below which no imports would be allowed and thereby, prohibit large-scale cheaper imports.
While the proposed move is likely to benefit large players such as JSW Steel, Tata Steel and SAIL among others, it would certainly not help the secondary steelmakers, which produce more than half of India’s annual output, since these firms largely depend upon the imports of semis, slabs and billets for production, industry watchers say.
Secondary steel producers have already registered strong protest for any kind of move that would make their imports costlier saying there was no need to protect a few at the cost of the many. Any price hike as a result of the imposition of MIP would take the sheen further away from them and make many of them unviable.
On the other hand, consequent to the growing imports, country’s large steelmakers are not in the pink of their health with SAIL reporting over R1,300 crore loss in the first half of the current fiscal.
Again, being the only country with positive steel consumption growth, India remains the only silver lining for the global steelmakers. Steel imports to India have been galloping for quite some time now. After growing by over 70% last fiscal, in the first seven months to October, it has moderated a little, but has gone up by 42 % to 6.68 MT.