India’s ministry of steel has initiated talks with its counterparts in the government aiming to formulate a strategy for broad-based domestic generation and supply of ferrous scrap, government sources said on Tuesday, April 15.
The sources said that the steel ministry is even looking to set up a standing inter-ministerial body to co-ordinate across various industrial sectors to expand the base of ferrous scrap generation, which is now predominantly based on the automobile sector for generation of the bulk of scrap.
The government initiative is against the backdrop of India needing to import about 25 percent of its total ferrous scrap requirements and potential export restrictions looming in Europe and US, the sources said.
They said that the proposed inter-ministerial body would have the mandate to tap into potentially high scrap generating industries like consumer durables, engineering and capital goods manufacturing and shipbreaking to augment scrap generation and supply, and ease the current high focus on the automobile sector.
It was pointed out that currently as per government-framed rules, owners are offered incentives for offering end-of-life vehicles for scrapping and the ministry of steel would be looking at the viability of extending such a scheme to other sectors that can assure incremental generation of ferrous scrap.