In an effort to protect the domestic steel industry from surging Chinese imports, the Finance Ministry has hiked the duty imposed on various categories of steel.

However, categories such as stainless steel (flat) and CRGO (cold rolled grain-oriented electrical) steel have been exempted.

A senior Finance Ministry official said that barring exempted categories, steel products with 5 per cent duty will attract 7.5 per cent duty from Wednesday, a 2.5 percentage point increase. Products (barring a few) having 7.5 per cent duty will now have 10 per cent duty, again a 2.5 percentage point increase.

The official said the duty on ingots & billets, alloy steel (flat & long), stainless steel (long) and non-alloy long products will now be 7.5 per cent. At the same time, non-alloy flat products and other alloy flat products will attract a duty of 10 per cent.

However, CRGO (which is used mainly in transformers) will continue to attract 5 per cent duty, while stainless steel (flat) will invite 7.5 per cent duty.

Following the hike, shares of listed steel companies made smart gains on the bourses.

Though the industry feels that the hike should have been higher, Ministry officials said considering the current market situation, it is sufficient and will certainly curb dumping. Steel imports rose 69 per cent in the April-January 2014-15 period and reached 8.12 million tonnes. Out of this, China’s share was 2.9 mt, a whopping 205 per cent rise from 953,350 tonnes in the same period a year ago.

It is this that prompted both the steel companies and the Ministry to push for a duty hike.

Following the Finance Ministry’s decision, Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said after anti-dumping duty, this is another concrete step toward ‘Make in India.’

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