Increased measures to check India’s steel imports will further aggravate the rate of decline of engineering product exports from the country, India’s Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) said in a statement on Monday, January 18.
The apex body representing engineering product exporting companies in India stated that Indian engineering product exports fell 14 percent year on year during the April-November period of 2015 to $40 billion, while adding that the rate of decline will worsen as Indian engineering products are being made uncompetitive with the government steadily increasing costs of imported steel to protect a “handful of local steel producers.”
The EEPC said that during 2015 the government increased import duty on all categories of steel imports by five percent and levied 20 percent safeguard duty on 62 steel products without assessing the impact on downstream manufacturing units and Indian companies’ ability to maintain market share among foreign buyers.
Warning against any further hike in customs duty on steel imports during the Indian Union Budget 2016-17 scheduled for February 2016 and against including more flat steel products under safeguard duty, the EEPC said that a large number of small and medium-scale engineering product manufacturer-exporters will have no option but to shut down if the export market continues to shrink.