Some countries including China are dumping their products in India at cheaper rates: Sai

New Delhi, July 27 (KNN) Some countries including China are dumping their products in India at cheaper rates and adversely impacting the health of domestic producers, Minister of State for Steel Vishnu Deo Sai has said.

Informing the Parliament, Sai said the reasons for increase in imports of steel products from China are that there is huge overcapacity in China, due to which they are exporting surplus steel even at below cost of production to growing markets like India.

During the year 2015-16, against a total production capacity of about 118 MT, India had produced about 91 MT of finished steel with an apparent consumption of about 80 MT.

“Thus the country is capable of meeting almost the entire domestic steel demand.  Only a small quantity of high quality steel, not manufactured domestically needs to be imported,” he said.

The country has witnessed a total finished steel import of about 9.32 MT during the year 2014-15 whereas the import has gone up to about 11.71 MT during 2015-16.

The government has taken several steps like imposing Minimum Import Price (MIP) on 173 steel products, levying Anti-Dumping Duty for five years on imports of certain variety of hot-rolled flat products of stainless steel and more.

The move has, however, triggered concerns amongst the downstream steel industry who say that the curbs have raised their cost of production. (KNN Bureau)