On January 20, India's leading steelmakers, including SAIL, Tata Steel, JSW and Essar Steel, asked their government to raise the steel import tariff due to the weakening of the market caused by arrivals of foreign goods. The steelmakers also requested the government to increase liquidity in the domestic economy in order to stimulate demand for commodities, especially from the automobile and construction sectors.
Accordingly, the domestic producers want the import duty on steel to be raised to 15 percent from the present five percent, in order to prevent dumping of steel products from countries like China and Ukraine.
In mid-November, the Indian government had announced the introduction of a five percent ad valorem import duty on specified iron and steel items for the purpose of protecting the domestic industry from cheaper imports, in particular from China, which had removed the export duty on various steel products.
Earlier in April, the Indian government had removed the import duty on steel products in a bid to control inflation. Since then, however, steel prices had dropped and demand weakened on the back of the global economic recession.