The issue of rising imports hampering domestic steel industry has prompted steel makers to seek the government’s intervention in imposing more measures to protect the industry.
India continues to be a net steel importer, with inbound shipments exceeding exports by 0.47 MT during the first half of FY26. Even while there was a 40 per cent rise in export volumes to 4.43 MT, India imported 0.79 million tonnes (MT) of finished steel in September this year, up from 0.69 MT in August, mostly from countries like China.
Despite producing 122.4 MT of crude steel in the January-September period, India could not match China’s crude steel production, which was 73.5 MT in September alone, as per data by global body World Steel Association (worldsteel). This was over five times than India’s September crude steel production of 13.6 MT.
As per market data, stainless steel is also unable to reach 100 per cent capacity utilisation of the total installed capacity of 7.5 million tonnes. It remains around 60 per cent only due to impact of imports.
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Over the past few years, the Ministry of Steel has come up with more than 100 quality control orders (QCOs) which refrain non-BIS compliant steel products to enter the Indian market.
But industry bigwigs want the QCO validity to be extended.
“The validity of QCOs can be extended to avoid sub-standard and cheap materials from entering the country,” an industry player said.
“The government should come up with additional similar measures to protect the domestic industry, both steel and stainless steel, which looks to make investment worth crores to increase capacity to meet future demand, in line with the ‘Atmanirbhar’ initiative of the government”, said the industry player.
In March, the commerce ministry’s investigation arm, DGTR, had recommended the imposition of a 12 per cent provisional safeguard duty for 200 days on certain steel products with an aim to protect domestic players from a surge in imports.
After this, the stainless industry also approached the government to investigate stainless steel imports as the safeguard duty did not cover their concerns.
A high level committee of NITI Aayog is likely to meet steel industry leaders next week over the issue of import, a source said.
As per BigMint data, domestic steel prices slumped to a five-year low in October, impacted by multiple factors, including surging imports.
Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) too flagged a surge in steel imports in its October bulletin, saying the surge is largely driven by lower import prices. It has also called for policy support to boost the competitiveness of domestic steel production.
Imports from Korea, Russia, and Indonesia increased, while shares of China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan declined compared with September 2024.
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