The Ministry of Steel, Government of India, in a follow-up to a previous notification of the Steel & Steel Products (Quality Control) Order, 2020, dated February 19, 2020, has allowed 12 products to stay out of the ambit of the said order for another three months. Consequently, the mandatory Bureau of Indian Standards quality control order will kick in for these 12 products from July 23, 2020.
Not commodity grades
These 12 products include ferro silicon (IS1110:1990), ferro nickel (IS4409:1973), hot rolled steel strip – balling (IS1029:1970), hot rolled mild steel sheets and strip in coil forms for cold reduced tinplate and cold reduced back plate (IS2385:1977), specifications for structural steels for construction of hulls of ships (IS3039:1988), bright steel bars (IS9550:2001), tool and die steels (IS3748:1990), steels for hardening and tempering (IS5517:1993), high-speed tool steels (IS7291:1981), steel for valves for internal combustion engines (IS7494:1981), C Mn steel forgings for pressure vessels (IS12146:1987) and Fe based amorphous strip delivered in the semi-processed state (IS16585:2016).
It may be noted that these above products for which the date has been extended are not secondary or commodity-grade products but specialised, niche, value-added categories and are mainly imported.
BIS order from April 23
In fact, all the commodity grade products have been brought under the mandatory BIS norms from today, April 23, 2020.
The February 19, 2020 notification from the Ministry of Steel takes forward the July 23, 2019 order (issued on July 22, 2019), whereby two grades of ingots and billets, namely IS2830 and IS2031, had to be brought within the ambit of the mandatory quality control order. While IS2830 was applicable with immediate effect then, IS2031 was to come into effect within nine months of the issuance of the order, which is April 23, 2020.
In fact, in 2012, the Ministry of Steel, as per a gazette notification, had said no person shall manufacture or store for sale, sell or distribute steel and steel products… which do not conform to the BIS standards. These pertained to the schedule for long steel value chain.
The BIS had come out with the first Quality Control Order in 2012 which was applicable to several steel products, including ingots and billets. This order categorised these two products under two IS codes – IS2830 and IS2031. As per this order, the sulphur content in the products under IS2831 (2012) was capped at 0.055-0.060% while that of phosphorus was mandated at 0.055-0.075%. Under IS2830, both the sulphur and phosphorus content were to be restrained at 0.045-0.050%.
The February 19, 2020 notification, drawing reference from the July 22 order, gives April 23 as the date for implementation of the previous order. “So, wherever it was written nine months from the date of the notification (in the July 22, 2019 order), the government, in the February 19, 2020 notification, has supplanted that time period with April 23, 2020. However, out of all the products that come under the mandatory quality control order, some products have been kept out of the notification ambit for another three months. So, instead of April 23, the order will kick in on July 23, 2020 for these 12 products,” an industry source told SteelMint.
The ICEX source said: “The February 19 notification indicates that long products categories like billets and ingots will have to be compulsorily manufactured under BIS norms. IS2830 and IS2031 have become compulsory and are being brought under mandatory implementation since today. So, technically, no player can produce non-BIS now.”
COVID-19 impact?
So basically these particular products have got a reprieve from the previous nine months to one year.
Commenting on the larger picture behind the extension of the order for these 12 product categories, industry sources feel the move could be because of the COVID-19 impact. Most of these 12 products are niche, and of high-value that are mostly imported. At present, imports have been hit globally because of the pandemic. Hence, perhaps this is the reason that these products have been given a three-month extension.
~By Madhumita Mookerji
Leave a Reply