Indian government imposed provisional safeguard duty of 20% on hot rolled products with some exceptions like flat steel products with width less than 600 mm, API grade steel, silicon electrical steel, coated steel, flat products of spring steel quality, and flat products of stainless steel.
Safeguard duty imposed by Indian government on imported HRC products is effective from today i.e. 15 Sep’15 and is valid for 200 days. This move is taken by the government in the light of increased cheap HRC imports, especially from China, Japan, Korea, and Russia.
On 27 Jul’15, a petition was filed by SAIL, JSW Steel and Essar Steel (who contribute to more than 50% of total HRC production in India) to Director General of Safeguards for imposition of safeguard duty on imports of ‘Hot Rolled Flat products of non-alloy and other alloy steel in coils of width of 600 mm or more’ under Rule 5 of the Customs Tariff (Identification and and Assessment of Safeguard Duty) Rules, 1997.
The application was then examined by Director General of Safeguards (DGS) and based on the data submitted, it was confirmed that increased imports of HRC have caused serious injury to the domestic industry.
On 9 Sep’15, the DGS recommended 20% provisional safeguard duty on certain HRC products, which was then investigated by standing committee of Safeguards headed by Commerce Secretary. And within a week the committee announced imposition of provisional safeguard duty on certain HRC products (excluding products mentioned above).
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