India’s Ministry of Steel has recommended to its counterparts in the Ministry of Finance to reduce the import duty on coking coal to nil from the current rate of 2.5 percent in the national budget scheduled to be presented to the Indian parliament on February 1, Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma said on Monday, January 22.
She said that the scrapping of import duty on coking coal in the budget is in line with a similar recommendation for scrapping the current 2.5 percent import duty on steel melting scrap.
India is heavily dependent on imported coking coal and domestically available coking coal is of very high ash content and not suitable for domestic steel mills with their current operational technology, she added.