Indian steel producers in a pre-budget memorandum to India’s Ministry of Finance have sought the scrapping of the current 2.5 percent import duty on coking coal, a government official said on Monday, June 17.
The official said that steel companies represented by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) have submitted the demand ahead of the national budget to be presented before India’s parliament on July 5.
The steel companies said that, with India needing to import almost 85 percent of its requirement of coking coal, the current import duty as protection for domestic coking coal producers is redundant and only contributes to the distress of rising input costs for domestic pig iron producers.
At the same time, the domestic steel companies have sought an increase in import duty on scrap from 2.5 percent at present to 10 percent and have also demanded that the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) lay down standards for imported scrap, the official added.