KOLKATA: Steel demand rose by nearly 7% in India during the first six months of the current fiscal, triggered by growth in the construction,infrastruc-ture and auto sectors. More significantly, such demand growth came on the back of a 4% rise in production by domestic steel companies during the period.
In this light Union steel minister Virbhadra Singh on Saturday said: “We estimate domestic steel production to go up to 60 million tonne(mt) by the end of 2009-10. Depending on various product cate-gories, steel demand has grown between 4% and 9% during April-September 2009.” Compared to this, last year the country's steel pro-duction was at 54.6 mt.
The minister was talking to newsmen here at the Metals Minerals Manufacturing Expo (MMME) 2009. However, despite a strong de-mand, steel prices are likely to remain tight in the current year, ac-cording to Tata Steel's managing director, H M Nerurkar. The main reason for this is the overcapacity in the global steel industry which is forcing a lot of companies to push metal into India's growing appetite for steel.
Speaking on the sidelines of MMME 2009, Mr Nerurkar, said: “Demand is good but prices are likely to remain tight till the end of the year. We have seen prices move up and down within a band of $50. This situation is likely to continue till there exists significant overca-pacity in the rest of thwe world.”
Incidentally cheap imports are making their way into India from countries like Russia, China, and other parts of East Europe and south east Asia.
Source : The Economic Times