The government will take more steps to contain imports of defective or sub-standard steel with a view to helping domestic manufacturers, an official said. The official said that local players prefer imports of defective or sub-standard steel as it is cheaper. According to industry experts, sub-standard steel impacts the quality of goods and hurt domestic manufacturers.
The issue was discussed during a high-level meeting of steel and commerce ministries Tuesday. “There is a need to contain imports of defective and sub standard steel. It comes in India because it is cheap in price,” the official added.
There are already quality control guidelines for various steel products used in various industries to check imports of sub-standard items. It was also decided to provide steel at affordable rates to engineering exporters, which have complained that the domestic steel makers charge huge margins from them.
Engineering exporters use steel as a raw material to manufacture products for export purposes. “It was decided in the meeting that steel would be provided to engineering exporters at affordable prices and benefits of advance authorisation scheme will be passed on to steel makers. The nitty-gritties will be finalised by the directorate general of foreign trade on this,” the official added.
According to the exporters, high prices of domestic steel, a crucial raw material, as compared to international market, has resulted in non-competitiveness of Indian downstream engineering exports. The ministries of commerce and steel Tuesday assured engineering exporters of making all the efforts to ensure the sector’s outbound shipments reach USD 200 billion by 2030. The country’s engineering exports rose by 6.36 per cent to USD 83.7 billion in 2018-19 from USD 78.7 billion in 2017-18.
Source: financialexpress.com