In an unprecedented move, Steel Authority of India Ltd has filed an anti-dumping petition with the Union Commerce Ministry in respect of import of steel plates. The Steel Ministry while supporting SAIL has asked the Commerce Ministry to see that SAIL gets deemed export benefits against international competitive bids. The turn of events would appear to be the fall-out of concessional duty allowed for project imports. Project imports in four categories — fertiliser, power, coal and petrochemical — have been exempted from the 10 per cent countervailing duty. SAIL, according to informed sources, has contended that projects in the four exempted categories require very substantial quantities of steel. The duty concession is resulting in huge imports of steel; much to the detriment of the interest of domestic steel producers like SAIL.

BIFR hearings reach dead end

State Bank of India’s refusal to follow the Reserve Bank of India guidelines in extending reliefs and concessions to sick public sector units before the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) is beginning to have a cascading effect with other banks also inclined to toe the line of the ‘big-brother’. Sources in the banking industry say that the SBI stance has put the other banks in a fix, since many of them are also having to backtrack on their commitments at the hearings of the BIFR. They point out that the SBI group is involved in almost all public sector units of the country as one of the banks in the consortium. With other banks finding it hard to take a view at variance with the SBI stance, there is a stalemate at the BIFR hearings, with the board being unable to finalise rehabilitation packages for PSUs in which SBI is involved.

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