Hon’ble Supreme Court has passed the order after hearing on 9 Oct’18 and further listed the case on 14 Nov’18.
Meanwhile DGFT (Director General of Foreign Trade), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Department of Commerce, has come out with Notification dated 23 Oct’18 on pet coke based on the above order of Hon’ble SC.
The regulations for import of pet coke has various riders and is briefed below:
Import of pet coke for fuel purpose is prohibited. However, import of pet coke is “free” for cement, lime kiln, calcium carbide and gasification industries and graphite electrode industries for use as feed stock or in the manufacturing process on actual user basis.
Aluminum industry can import calcined pet coke not exceeding 0.5 million tonnes per annum and calcined pet coke manufacturing units can import raw pet coke not exceeding 1.4 million tonnes per annum with actual user condition.
It may be observed that while, the overall annual limit of import of RPC and CPC has been mentioned in the notification, the basis for customer-wise break-up or customer-wise allocation has not been mentioned.
Various industries and industry associations have met the DGFT recently to resolve this issue. It is expected that DGFT may address this issue by end of this month.
Further, the application filed by Indian Steel Association for import of pet coke, for use in blast furnace in the steel industry, has been listed by Hon’ble SC on 14 Nov’18. Meanwhile, MOEF&CC is expected to file their report to Hon’ble SC before hearing of the case.
Steel Industries are also expecting some relief, like aluminum and graphite industries, as it is used in the manufacturing process. However, the clarity would emerge only when Hon’ble SC passes the order after hearing on 14 Nov’18.
Leave a Reply