On Tuesday, July 17, India's Ministry of Finance announced that it has increased the import duty on flat alloy steel products to 7.5 percent in an attempt to control imports of Chinese origin boron-added flat steel products.
Last month, several Indian steel producers had a meeting with D. R. S. Chowdhury, secretary of India's steel ministry, at which they discussed the increasing imports of non-alloy flat steel products being passed off as alloys through boron addition in order to benefit of the lower import duty of 5 percent.
Chinese origin boron-added hot rolled coils, sheets and plates have been subject to five percent import duty since they fall under the alloy steel category. With the new import duty, alloy and non-alloy flat steel products are subject to same import duty rate.
Under India's customs classification, a minimum of 0.0008 percent of boron in steel changes the product classification of the metal from non-alloy to alloy.