India has imposed an anti-dumping duty on 47 steel products from half-a-dozen countries - China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia - to protect the domestic industry from cheap imports.
The duty has been imposed for five years on products such as hot-rolled flat products of steel and those coated with zinc and clad steel.
According to an official notification, the levy will take retrospective effect from August 8, 2016. The duties are in the range of $478-561 per tonne.
The directorate of anti-dumping and allied duties (DGAD) has found out in its investigation that the items have been exported to India at below their normal value. This resulted in "material injury" to the domestic industry, the directorate said, and recommended "imposition of definitive anti-dumping duty on the imports of subject goods".
Anti-dumping duty and imposition of a floor price on imports are some of the measures taken by the government over the past two years to protect the domestic industry.
These measures prompted Japan, the world's second biggest steel producer, to ask the World Trade Organisation to set up a dispute settlement panel to examine India's actions.
Indian companies such as JSW Steel, Tata Steel and SAIL have benefited from the restrictions, with imports falling around 37 per cent to 7.4 million tonnes and exports jumping 102 per cent to 8.2 million tonnes in the last fiscal.
Companies affected by the duties include Korea's Hyundai Steel, Posco and Samsung C&T.
Japanese companies such as Honda Trading Corp, Mitsui, Nippon Steel, Sumitomo Corp, Toyoto Tshusho Corp and Marubeni-Itochu Steel come under the purview of the anti-dumping duty.
From China, companies to be impacted include Jiangsu Shangang, Xinsha International, Burwill Resources, Lu Qin, GS Global and Steelco Pacific.
India had imposed a provisional anti-dumping duty on steel from August 8, 2016, for six months and later extended it by two months in February. The duty is now being regularised and levied for a five-year period.
Source: The Telegraph