India’s Ministry of Steel has sought intensified monitoring by the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) under the Ministry of Finance of the steady inflow of scrap grade cold rolled grain oriented (CRGO) steel across Indian borders with neighboring countries, a steel ministry official said on Thursday, September 22.
The ministry official said that, despite mandatory certification from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for all imports of CRGO into the country, it failed to check the flow of scrap grade CRGO entering the country across its borders with Nepal.
The official claimed that some Indian traders set up steel processing units in Nepal and were pushing non-prime CRGO into India with fake BIS certifications using land routes into bordering Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
According to the official, a large part of the domestic CRGO demand of 300,000 mt is being met through such illegal imports of scrap grade CRGO as a number of electrical equipment manufacturers are resorting to using non-certified material as the cost is at least 50 percent lower compared to prime CRGO.