Italy Dislodges Belgium to Become India’s Largest Steel Importer

Dislodging Belgium, Italy has again become the biggest importer of Indian steel. Data compiled by Joint Plant Committee (JPC) showed that while Italy imported 2.05 lakh tonnes finished steel in the first two months of the current fiscal, Belgium imported 1.73 lakh tonne in the same period.

Though Italy has traditionally been the biggest importer of Indian steel, Belgium piped Italy in the last fiscal by a margin. Italy had imported over 11 lakh tonnes steel from India in the last fiscal compared with Italy’s total imports of 9.42 lakh tonnes.

In the previous two fiscal also, Italy was the top importer of Indian steel. In 2015-16, it imported 3.45 lakh tonnes steel and in 2014-15, Italy’s imports of Indian steel stood at 4.7 lakh tonnes.

Though Vietnam, UAE and Nepal were the third, fourth and fifth largest markets for Indian steel exports respectively in the last fiscal; UAE has, in the first two months of the current fiscal, become the third largest importer of Indian steel displacing Vietnam. While UAE imported 1.06 lakh tonnes steel in the April-May period of the current fiscal, Vietnam imported only 31,000 tonnes steel.

Spain has now become the fourth largest importer. The European Union nation imported 1.03 lakh tonnes steel during the April-May period compared with 4.4 lakh tonnes in the entire last fiscal.

India, which became a net exporter of steel last fiscal after a gap of three years, is expected to make further inroads into the export market in the current fiscal mainly on two reasons – a) its domestic sales is still anemic and b) China’s inward focus on the domestic market.

There is already a tight supply in the export market and that augurs well for the Indian steel firms. During the April-June period of the current fiscal, India’s exports zoomed by 66% to 2.03 million tonnes.

Imports of Indian steel ( In ,000 tonnes) :

(Source: JPC)