Unit owners write to authorities concerned to crack whip against ‘SMS
mafia’
For the last five years, the SMS mafia is
allegedly involved in manipulation of steel prices, causing loss to
industrialists. File photo
Soon after the formation of the new government at the Centre, the SMS mafia has
again become active, creating panic among industrialists. For the last five
years, the mafia has been allegedly ruining their businesses by manipulating
the steel prices and arbitrarily lowering and raising the rates.
Steel companies fought a long legal battle against the SMS
mafia, but they did not get any major success.
Raising concern over the development, All Industries Trade Forum
(AITF) has written to authorities concerned to intervene and keep a check on
the sudden fluctuating prices of steel.
Badish Jindal, president, AITF, said the SMS mafia determines
the steel prices in the country in an unauthorised manner. The mafia alters the
prices 4-5 times daily and sends the prices determined by it through over one
million WhatsApp platforms in the country. Behind this price rise and fall are
traders who deal in lakhs of tonnes of scrap and steel, who order the SMS mafia
to raise and lower the prices according to their situation. Due to such a large
number of SMSes being sent, the industries consider the prices sent by them as
the basis.
Jindal added that the mafia has lowered the prices of steel by Rs 4,000 per
tonne in 20 days. On June 4, the price of steel ingot was Rs 47,500 per tonne,
which was lowered to Rs 43,500 per tonne on June 25. There is no basis for this
fall because there has been no major reduction in the prices of foreign scrap
but the prices of scrap coming from the industries here have been lowered.
Similarly, this SMS mafia had increased the price of steel ingot from Rs 42,000
to Rs 48,000 tonne in April and May, due to which the steel mafia made profits
of billions of rupees and when this mafia sold all their stocks, the steel
prices were reduced.
According to information
received from sources, now these big speculators are again accumulating stock
at low prices and the SMS Mafia will keep the prices low till they collect a
large stock and as soon as sufficient amount of stock is collected, this mafia
will again increase the prices heavily in the coming days. Due to this fraud of
theirs, steel furnaces making iron from scrap have started getting closed, said
the AITF president