India’s Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) is investigating rising steel imports into the country as a precursor to the possible imposition of safeguard duty on such imports, a government official said on Tuesday, December 17.
The directorate will also hold consultations with micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs) which are also consumers of steel and often source requirements through imports, the official said.
The commerce ministry, which is the administrator for the DGTR, has received a request for such an investigation, commerce ministry secretary Sunil Barthwal said in a statement.
“The DGTR is doing it, and in the investigation, they look at the whole value chain. So, we are looking at not only the HR (hot rolled) and CR (cold rolled) coil which are coming to India, they are also looking at the requirement of downstream industry, whether there is a production imbalance or whether it is an injury because of excess capacity in steel,” he said.
He said that only the DGTR will make suitable recommendations, which will be forwarded by the ministry of commerce to its counterparts in the ministry of finance to make a final call, he said.
The ministry of steel, for its part, has been seeking the imposition of a 25 percent safeguard duty on steel imports.