India’s ministry of steel is consulting with domestic steel producers on options to restrict imports coming into the country including a tariff quota system as in the EU, government sources said on Thursday, December 14.
The sources said that talks are being held with domestic steel companies like Tata Steel, Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), JSW Steel Limited and Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL).
The options on the table are a tariff rate quota which acts as an upper limit for imports into India from the exporting country. Under it, the exporting country ships volumes within prescribed limits at negligible or no duty and, once the volume limit is exhausted, a safeguard duty comes into effect for subsequent shipments.
Another measure under consideration is the removal of the lesser duty rules. Under this measure, India has typically followed a lesser duty rule in its antidumping investigations, which means that the duty is imposed to the extent of dumping margin or injury margin, whichever is lower. The injury margin under the present law is calculated as the difference between the non-injurious price and the landed price.
Once the lesser duty rule is removed, duty will be levied on a pre-specified price and not on the invoice price.
Yet another measure being discussed is a port-based import duty structure, whereby imports through some designated ports would attract a higher rate of duty.
The move to restrict imports comes in the wake of India becoming a net importer of steel for the April-November period this year, during which imports were estimated at 4.3 million mt and exports at 4.0 million mt.