Global Steel Makers Opt BIS Certificate Beforehand to Trade in India

After inability of various tariff measures to control steel imports, Indian government has now resorted to non-tariff barrier by making BIS license mandatory for all steel products.

In order to deal with the influx of cheap imports, Indian government had increased imports duty twice by 5% since Jun’15 and had also announced 20% provisional safeguard duty on HRC in Sep’15.

However these measures failed to curb steel imports in to India especially from China, Korea, Japan and CIS countries. Thus government has now made BIS license compulsory for all steel products which are to be manufactured or traded in India.

BIS license aims at providing third party guarantee of quality, safety and reliability of products to the customer. The time taken for completion of BIS certification process usually varies from 9 to18 months.

However there are few foreign companies who already have BIS license to trade in India. Here is the list of companies who have BIS license for flat steel grades like IS 2062, IS 2041, IS 277 and IS 648.

Source: Bureau of Indian Standards

IS 2062: Hot rolled medium and high tensile structural steel (excluding bars and rods of diameter or thickness less than 6 mm and structural below 50 mm x 50 mm x 6 mm)

IS 2041: Steel plates for pressure vessels used at moderate and low temperature

IS 648: Cold rolled non-oriented electrical steel sheet and strip–fully processed type (CRNO)

IS 277: Galvanized steel sheets (plain and corrugated)