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India’s steel sector seeing improvement in recent past after slowdown: Pradhan
Dec-03-2019

Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said that India’s steel sector is seeing improvement in the recent past after a slowdown. He also said that the country has been consistently increasing domestic production of steel and is a net exporter in the current financial year (FY20). He noted that steel is a deregulated sector where market forces and commercial considerations decide construction and location of new steel plants.

Pradhan has indicated that the import of steel has increased marginally in the last three years from 7.23 million tonnes in 2016-17 to 7.83 million tonnes in 2018-19. He also said that anti-dumping duties have been imposed on various grades of steel which were dumped into the country in order to counter import of cheap steel. He added that import of steel grades which are not manufactured in adequate quantity in the country is essential for supporting manufacturing sector.

The minister further said the production of iron ore in the country is sufficient to meet the current demand and consumption by the domestic industry. He noted that the supply of iron ore during last year i.e. 2018-19 was 207.7 MT against its demand of 189 MT. He also stated that the entire demand of coking coal is not met from domestic production as its supply is limited and thus no option is left but to resort to import of coking coal.

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