Indian Steel Minister proposes Higher Duty on Chinese Imports

Alarmed by the “dumping” from China, the steel ministry today pressed for raising the import duty to protect the domestic industry.

“The steel industry and the government, both are worried over dumping from China. We have discussed increasing the import duty with the Finance Minister, and we hope that we will get favourable results,” Steel and Mines Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told a press conference here.

The steel imports from China in April-January 2014-15 rose to 2.9 million tonnes (MT) against 1.08 MT for the entire 2013-14.

During the same period, carbon steel imports from the neighbour stood at 1.52 MT while stainless/alloy steel imports came in at 1.37 MT.

Steel imports went up cumulatively to 8.38 MT in April-February 2014-15, registering a whopping 67.3 per cent rise over the same period last fiscal.

In the Budget 2015-16, the government has opened up the possibility of increasing import duty for finished and semi-finished steel to 15 per cent from 10 per cent, designed to shielding home-grown firms from rising imports.

The Commerce Ministry has already recommended an anti-dumping duty of up to USD 316 per tonne on imports of stainless steel from China, Korea and Malaysia.

Import Duty on Japanese Steel reduced to 0.8% under FTA

On the contrary, Indian government has reduced duty on several products (including steel) imported from Japan under Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed in August, 2011.

Earlier, India had signed FTA with South Korea in Jan’10 and with Japan in Aug’11. Under this FTA, duty on most of the products (including finished steel) traded between the countries are either eliminated or reduced sharply. Duties in the related cases come to zero level in phases.

Duty Structure for Steel imported from Japan

*wef 1 Apr, 2015

With inputs from PTI