India’s cabinet of ministers has approved a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for 10 sectors including steel, aimed to enhance domestic manufacturing capacities and export capabilities, a government spokesperson said on Thursday, November 12.
The PLI scheme has approved a government fiscal outlay for such incentives to be offered to the steel sector amounting to $855 million over a period of five years, the spokesperson said.
The incentives for the steel industry will be specifically to enhance domestic production of special steels and are to be administered by the Ministry of Steel, the cabinet of ministers said.
Apart from attracting foreign investments and technology for manufacture of special steels in India through the incentive scheme, the scheme will also be sharply focused on facilitating growth of local manufacture of the highly import-dependant cold rolled grain-oriented (CRGO) grade steel used by the electrical sector, an official at the steel ministry said.
Of the total incentives of $855 million earmarked for the steel sector over a five-year period, as much as $77 million is aimed to be offered to steel producers expanding or diversifying into production of CRGO grade steel, he said.
The steel ministry official pointed out that in the April-July period this year Indian imports of CRGO grade steel amounted to an estimated 44,800 mt, while during the fiscal year 2019-20 imports were recorded at 217,000 mt of the country’s total steel imports of 6.77 million mt.