Government puts more steel grades under quality control order

NEW DELHI: The steel ministry has brought more steel grades -- cold-reduced (CR) low carbon sheets and strips, hard-drawn wire and cold-rolled strips -- under the Quality Control (QC) order.

The move is expected to check the rampant import of cheap steel products into the country, especially from China, Japan and South Korea.

Under the Steel and Steel Products (Quality Control) (Second Amendment) Order, 2016, which amended the Steel and Steel Products (QC) Order, 2015, the Bureau of Indian Standards ( BIS) has increased the grades of CR low-carbon, CR strips and hard-drawn steel wire, a fresh notification said.

This is the second amendment. The original notification, which was first published in December 2015, was earlier amended in March 2016.

Under the latest amendment, the ministry has included all grades of hard-drawn steel wire, certain grades of CR low carbon steel sheets and strips and those of CR steel strips.

To ensure only quality steel is produced or imported into the country, the government notified Steel and Steel Products (QC) Orders, 2012 in March 2012 and Steel and Steel Products (QC) Orders, 2015.

To check imports, India had slapped a minimum import price (MIP) on 173 steel grades in February this year, but shrank the list to 66 while extending the safeguard measures in August.

Now, it is bringing the steel products excluded from the MIP under the anti-dumping duty ambit.

The positive impact of various safeguard measures taken to check surge in imports is being reflected in in-bound shipments of the metal declining 34.5 per cent to 3.01 million tonnes (mt) in April-August of 2016-17 compared with the year-ago period.

Import in August fell 36 per cent to 0.62 mt over August 2015 and 2.2 per cent over July 2016.