The Indian government is likely to extend its restriction on imports of low ash metallurgical coke (met coke) beyond June 2025, government sources said on Wednesday, February 25.
In December 2024, the government had imposed quantitative limits with country-specific limitations on imports of low-ash coke.
The restrictions were put in place for the period of January-June 2025, with an aggregate cap of 1.4 million mt.
However, the sources said that, with domestic steel mills being slow to procure met coke from local manufacturers, the government is likely to extend the import restrictions beyond June.
Since the restrictions were imposed in December, the Ministry of Commerce has held a few rounds of talks with steel industry representatives, seeking higher volumes of sourcing from domestic met coke producers and reduction in imports from Indonesia and China.
Domestic steel mills, for their part, have raised the issue of the quality of locally produced met coke and have claimed that continuation of the import restrictions would hamper plans for ramping up domestic steelmaking capacity.
The country-specific quantitative limits on imports are Australia 51,276 mt, China 78,646 mt, Japan 209,000 mt, Russia 89,182 mt, Singapore 46,478 mt and 76 mt for the UK.
These imports are also subject to further restrictions and permitted only through ports with electronic data interchange , to facilitate real time monitoring of import quotas.
