India to soon announce Minimum Import Price for steel

By Anil Mathews (ScrapMonster Author)

December 21, 2015 02:42:36 AM

NEW DELHI (Scrap Monster): According to formal announcement by Anant Geete, Union Minister for Heavy Industries, the Indian government will soon announce a Minimum Import Price (MIP) for steel. This is to curb the dumping of cheap imported steel products to the country from other countries, especially China, Ukraine and South Korea. The minister was speaking on the sidelines of the Industrial Maintenance Expo 2015, held in Pune on Saturday.

Incidentally, the imports from these countries have soared higher significantly during recent times. Also, the price of imported steel is estimated to be almost 30%-40% lower when compared with the prices of domestically produced steel. In some cases, the price of the imported finished steel products was found to be even lower than the raw material price.

According to the Minister, cheaper imports from the above countries have badly hurt the domestic steel industry in the country. The country’s Commerce and Steel Ministries have proposed MIP for around 30 steel products, and are in the final stage of discussions to finalize the list of products that should be included in the MIP list.

The imposition of MIP is widely believed to give boost to Indian steel industry. However, users of alloy steel are likely to be impacted by the decision. Almost 100% alloy steel consumed in India is being imported. Hence increasing the import price is feared to affect end-users.