MoF slaps duty to stop dumping of HR coils

North Block, however, ignored the minimum duty of Rs 481 per tonne suggested by the commerce ministry last week. The reference price below which an anti-dumping duty will be levied on hot rolled coils is Rs 14,300 a tonne.

Hot rolled strips, sheets and plates from Russia, Ukraine or Kazakhstan will attract an anti-dumping duty, if priced below Rs 15,000 a tonne. The floor price for importing boiler quality plates from the CIS is Rs22,000 a tonne.

The anti-dumping duty comes in response to a petition filed jointly by a group of Indian steel-makers against low-priced hot rolled products being imported from the CIS. The petitioners included the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), Tata Steel and Essar Steel.

The anti-dumping duty has already helped steel-makers at home who now peg their rates to the landed cost of steel, increase the price of hot rolled products by almost Rs 500 a tonne. Another boon to the recession-hit steel industry was a customs duty concession granted to seven steel-making raw materials, not available in the country.

Acting on the recommendations of a taskforce set up by the finance minister, the revenue department waived the special import duties of two per cent and three per cent on limestone, coking coal, non-coking coal, metallurgical coke, ferro nickel, charge nickel or nickel oxide and graphite electrodes. The boon falls slightly short of industry expectations.

The steel industry had been pressing foran exemption from all special import duties, including the four per cent countervailing duty levied in this year’s Budget, which would have meant a total duty concession of nine per cent for steel mills. Industry sources seemed happy with the customs duty concession of five per cent granted last week, however.

The special import duty concessions will benefit steel makers across industry, most of whom have reported a decline in profits in the first half of this year. Since the raw materials are not imported in large quantities, the duty exemption will not mean much of a revenue loss for the national exchequer.

Steel producers import only 2.2 lakh tonne of limestone (with silica content of less than five per cent) in a year, for instance. Imports of coking coal containing less than 12 per cent ash, used by primary steel producers like SAIL and Tisco, goes up to nearly nine million tonne annually.

But metallurgical coke imports are limited to just 1.5 million tonne a year. Imports of nickel and its variousoxides are restricted to barely 8,000 tonne per year.