India may again impose anti-dumping duties on a variety of steel products following a fresh round of complaints by steel makers.
The government had in mid-September slapped a 20 per cent provisional safeguard duty on certain varieties of hot rolled steel for 200 days.
Top steel ministry officials said steel makers had earlier this week met commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman to plead for more protection from a new wave of dumping by Chinese, Korean and South east Asian companies.
The commerce minister, however, has told the steel makers that she would have to weigh their demands with that of user industries who were happy that prices had fallen as a result of global over capacity.
Earlier investigations into hot rolled coil imports from China, Korea and Malaysia have shown that imports had increased from 28 per cent of domestic demand in 2009 to 81 per cent by 2015.
Jindal Stainless Steel added to the weight of the complaints today by filing a fresh charge against the import of certain specifications of cold rolled flat products from China, European Union, South Africa, Malaysia and Taiwan among other countries.
Cold rolled flat stainless steel products are used for manufacturing white goods, processed equipment, dairy equipment, automotive components, rail carts, metro coaches, architecture, building and construction.
Last month, the directorate general of anti-dumping (DGAD) in its recommendation to the department of revenue suggested an anti-dumping duty of up to 57.39 per cent on cold rolled flat stainless steel products of width 600 mm to 1,250 mm.
"Steel imports of width above 1,250 mm have increased while imports of the goods subject to anti-dumping duty have declined," the DGAD said in its final findings.
The DG's investigation has found that that there has been no decline in domestic productivity per worker or per unit of investment but there has been a marked decline in profitability as prices have been driven down by cheaper imports.
As a result, sales by domestic steel majors have shrunk and their inventories have risen alarmingly.
The government had last month raised import duty on selected long and flat steel products by 2.5 per cent.
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