The Indian government has commenced an exercise to frame a policy that would make use of domestic steel mandatory for all government-funded infrastructure and construction projects across the country, an official at India’s Ministry of Steel said on Tuesday, January 17.
The official said that the Ministry of Steel has already completed consultations with all other ministries involved in government infrastructure and construction projects and that a definitive policy will be framed to promote usage of domestic steel vis-à-vis imported steel products.
The ministry official said that four “task force” committees have been set up which have been mandated to make a detailed study on the usage of steel in each sector like shipbuilding, railways, bridges and housing and to recommend ways and means to boost the use of steel in such sectors and the suitability of domestic steel products in each of these sectors.
According to the official, while the government has imposed several import protection measures to help Indian steel mills, these measures are temporary and cannot be persisted with in the long term.
In the long term, the only sustainable protection that could be offered to domestic steel producers was for the government to draw up a policy framework that would exponentially increase domestically produced steel and the proposed policy is a step in such a direction, the official added.