India’s anti-trust regulatory body, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has launched investigations into allegations of cartelization by domestic steel producers and alleged fixing of prices, government sources said on Wednesday, February 10.
The sources said that the investigations have been launched not based on any written complaints received by CCI but based on demands for such an investigation by several industrial sectors like housing builders.
It may be noted that even Minister for Roads and Highways Nitin Gadkari has repeatedly claimed that domestic steel producers had formed a cartel to continuously raise prices “unreasonably”, while even seeking a steel sector regulator to govern the industry.
It has been learned that the CCI is investigating if domestic steel companies have “colluded” in increasing prices continuously since June 2020, since the time the government had imposed antidumping duties on flat rolled product imports from China, Vietnam and South Korea, and domestic steel mills taking unfair advantage of such import protection.
Between June 2020 and November 2020, domestic steel prices had increased by 45 percent on the back of a series of base price hikes across all steel product categories.