In line with a decline in the availability of ferrous scrap in the international market, India’s imports of the material have dropped sharply and may hover around 6 million tons (mt) in 2016, a senior official from a leading scrap trader told ISMW.
“India was importing around 10 mt of scrap annually till two years back but the overall slowdown has reduced imports to around 6 mt in 2015 and my estimate is that India’s scrap imports will be around 6 mt in 2016 as well,” said Abhijeet Mahanta, Head of India Ferrous Operations of EMR, the world’s leading scrap supplier.
In the global market, availability of ferrous scrap has gone down by 40-45% in the last two years, he said.
Apart from supply shortage, the import duty imposed by the government on ferrous scrap is also impacting the inflow of the material, Mahanta said.
“India is the only country which persists with the import duty on scrap. Nowhere has there been any duty on scrap. This is a dichotomy. If the government wants clean energy, no pollution, then there is nothing like scrap since it is the best recycling one can get,” he observed.