Indian steel wire manufacturers are facing a shortage of 500,000 mt of steel input following the imposition of 20 percent safeguard duty on steel imports, an official at the Steel Wire Manufacturers Association of India (SWMAI) said on Wednesday, October 7.
The official said that, following the safeguard duty, the landed price of import steel for wire manufacturing had gone up by INR 6,000/mt ($92/mt) and the total import requirement of 500,000 mt has become unsustainable for steel wire producers, most of which are in small and medium-scale sectors.
The shortage of import steel input could lead to a fall of 40-50 percent in capacity utilization of steel wire producing units unless the government rationalizes the import duty and withdraws import protection for domestic steel mills which is hurting downstream value addition of steel products, he said.
The SWMAI official also stated that the association had communicated to India’s steel ministry that wire producers are compelled to resort to import steel inputs to bridge the demand-supply gap and also since availability of specific qualities of steel for wire manufacturing is not readily available in the local Indian market.