Govt imposes 20% safeguard duty on certain types of steel imports

15 Sep 2015 Evaluate

In order to protect the domestic steel industry from rising cheap imports, the government has imposed 20 per cent provisional safeguard duty of certain types of steel on the recommendations of the Directorate General of Safeguards (DGS). This duty comes into immediate effect and will be applicable for a period of 200 day. Safeguard duty is a WTO-compatible temporary measure that is brought in for a certain timeframe to avert any damage to a country's domestic industry from cheap imports.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the duty will be applied on specified categories of steel from all countries, adding that the power of imposing provisional duty was invoked in view of sudden surge in imports and subsequent injury to domestic producers. The duty will provide temporary relief to domestic industry by making imports costlier. Safeguard duty will be the latest imports of specific steel products from China, Japan and Korea for 200 days.

Earlier, DGS had recommended imposition of safeguard duty on hot-rolled flat steel products for 200 days to protect interests of the domestic industry. Such products account for almost 80 per cent of India’s steel imports. The major steel producers, like JSW Steel, Essar Steel and SAIL, representing 50 percent of the domestic production, have complained of surge in imports of steel products like hot-rolled steel and other variants from China, Korea, Japan and Russia and they had moved DGS, for imposition of the levy on imports of hot-rolled flat products of non-alloy and other alloy steel in coils of a width of 600 mm or more for four years.

In 2014-15, steel imports jumped 71% to 9.32 mt from 5.42 mt. China, Japan and Korea accounted for 76% of total imports which almost doubled to 7 mt from 3.8 mt. Imports of Chinese steel grew by 232%, Japan by 18% and Korea by 46%, according to steel ministry data. During April-June 2015, steel imports from China and Korea went up by 49 per cent and 105 per cent from Japan.Total imports (including semifinished steel) during Q1 FY16 surged by 57 per cent to 2.7 mt, this time on a higher base.

This year, basic customs duties on steel were raised twice in June and in August by 2.5% each time. In June, India imposed anti-dumping duty of up to $316 per tonne on imports of certain steel products from three countries, including China, to protect domestic producers from below-cost inbound shipments.

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