Govt issues clarification on Quality Control Order for steel products
The ministry made it clear that its order dated June 13 is merely to clarify that in the case of intermediate material for manufacturing of final products under BIS Standards, steel products will also have to follow BIS Standards prescribed for such intermediate products.
The Ministry made it clear that no new Quality Control Orders have been issued, and the order on June 13 was necessary to bring parity between importers and domestic producers of steel. Presently, the import of finished steel products is not at par with Indian manufacturers of finished steel products, as Indian steel products manufacturers have to use only BIS Standard-compliant intermediate material, while no such requirement was felt by importers for the import of steel products. It will be wrong to put domestic steel products manufacturers at a comparative disadvantage vis-à-vis imported products in terms of non-BIS-compliant intermediate input products.
The order will also help to ensure compliance with BIS Standards for intermediate products is required to ensure that the finished product is as per the quality requirement given by BIS Standards. If this is not done, a final product may be sub-standard. For example, a large quantity of coated steel is imported into India. Coated steel uses HR/CR Coil as base material, which is the main product in this case. If HR/CR Coil is not BIS compliant, coated steel cannot be BIS compliant, even if the coating process is itself BIS compliant, according to the statement.
Besides, the order is also aimed at checking the possibility of the import of substandard steel. Because of excess capacity and declining consumption in certain countries, there is a big possibility of the dumping of substandard steel. As India is the only fast-growing large economy in the world, there is a very high possibility of cheap steel getting pushed into the Indian market unless adequate measures are put in place for the import of quality steel. It is to be noted that if intermediate inputs (which form the core of finished products like HR coil, CR coil or coated steel) are not BIS compliant and are substandard, the final product cannot be BIS compliant, the Ministry's statement said.
The statement further highlighted that Integrated Steel Plants, which make intermediate products and finished products themselves, and the BIS licence has been issued to them, taking into account the whole process, will not need to have different licences for all stages, as the BIS certification process takes care of the whole manufacturing chain. The Ministry of Steel will issue clarifications in this regard after verification from BIS for such integrated steel plants.
It further states that apprehension of the possibility of a price rise due to the June 13 order issued by the Ministry of Steel is unfounded. India has a steel manufacturing capacity of 200 million tonnes, which is enough to meet domestic demand. Hence, no such possibility of price increase seems to be there.
The Ministry's statement also pointed out that many countries have imposed safeguard duties and measures to prevent the import of cheap steel from the international market, such imposition of sectoral tariffs, Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs), etc. Because of these safeguard measures adopted by other countries, the possibility of dumping of cheap substandard steel into India further increases. If this happens, this will have an extreme adverse impact on the domestic steel industry and especially the small steel industries in the country. This will also lead to the possibility of the loss of employment of lakhs of people.
India is the only major economy where steel consumption has grown at above 12 per cent for the last three years. On the contrary, the steel consumption in other geographies is either stagnant or declining. This fast growth in steel consumption is due to the Indian government's push on infrastructure strengthening, public and private sector development in buildings and real estate and growing manufacturing of capital goods in the country. To cater to this steel demand, the country will need about 300 MT steel capacity by 2030 and 400 MT of steel capacity by 2035. This capacity creation will require a capital infusion of approximately $200 billion by 2035.
If substandard cheap steel imports affect the domestic steel industry (both integrated steel producers and small steel industries), their capacity to infuse this capital will come into terrible strain, and the capacity expansion plans of the steel industry will be adversely affected, the statement added.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
11 minutes ago
- Time of India
More women join top IIMs as gender diversity rises
Top Indian business schools like IIMs are admitting more women. The six older IIMs have 9% more female students in the Class of 2027. IIM-Indore's new batch is over 53% women. IIM-Ahmedabad also saw an increase. These institutes are giving diversity points to female and non-engineering candidates. This will help create more diverse and inclusive business environments. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Specific diversity points Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads India's top business schools are increasing the intake of women for their flagship programmes, which experts say will help produce 'top of the order' female managers and leaders at a time when industry is looking to improve diversity across data compiled by ET shows that the six old Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) together have 9% more female students in the Class of 2027, compared with last year's batch. These premier institutes have completed the admission process for this IIM-Indore, as much as 53.79% of the new students are women, the highest in the institute's 29-year history. Female students account for 30.84% of the new batch at IIM-Ahmedabad, the most in four years. Narayanan Ramaswamy, national leader (education and skill development) at KPMG India, sees more women joining top B-schools as a win-win for the institutes and industry. While the Bschools will benefit from this diversity as their curriculum, pedagogy and industry engagement become more holistic, recruiters, too, are looking for diversity, especially at top management and decision-making leadership levels, he said. IIMs said they are taking steps to improve gender diversity on their campuses. IIM-Indore incorporated a diversity factor starting the 2025 admissions cycle, allocating special weight to women and candidates with non-engineering out of the 100 points in the final selection stage are allocated to such candidates.'We have introduced the diversity factor to build classrooms that reflect the richness of the real world, one that is diverse in perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences,' said its director, Himanshu Rai. 'A diverse cohort equips our students to thrive in dynamic business environments where empathy, collaboration and inclusivity are critical to success.'IIM-Kozhikode is another institute where women will be in the majority: of its 489 students, close to 55% are women in the new batch. Female and transgender candidates receive specific diversity points in the interview shortlisting process, said admissions chairperson Ram Kumar the first time in the last four years, IIM-Ahmedabad has more than 30% female students among the 414 students in the Class of 2027. Both the batch size and gender diversity percentage have increased for this IIM, from 397 and 22.92% for the class of 2022-24.'To help increase the pool of female candidates selected for the admission interviews, we have introduced gender diversity points this year while preparing the interview shortlist,' Karthik Sriram, chairperson, admissions, account for close to 40% of the batch of the full-time twoyear post-graduate programme at IIM-Bangalore, which is almost like last year, said Mukta Kulkarni, dean of academic programmes. IIM-Bangalore also focuses on disability inclusion.
Economic Times
11 minutes ago
- Economic Times
‘No trade deal under pressure of deadline': Piyush Goyal
Reuters India's trade minister Piyush Goyal Days ahead of the US' July 9 deadline for reciprocal tariffs, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said India does not enter into trade agreements based on deadlines but on mutual benefits and national interest. 'FTAs (free trade agreements) are possible only when both sides get benefits. It should be a win-win agreement. India never negotiates trade deals based on deadlines. Our focus is always on fairness and the country's benefit,' Goyal told media persons on the sidelines of an event, a day after Indian trade negotiators returned from an eight-day visit to the US to close a trade pact before July 9. The minister ruled out him visiting the US in the near term. The Indian negotiating team returned from Washington after hectic parleys with their US counterparts. 'India Always Ready to Do Deals' 'India's national interest should always be supreme… keeping that in mind, if a good deal happens then India is always ready to do deals with developed countries,' Goyal said. 'Jab deal achchhi ban jaaye, puri tarah se pakk jaaye tab usko sweekar karenge (When a good deal is done and ready, then we will accept it),' he emphasised. Asked whether he was hopeful of a trade deal with the US, Goyal said, 'I have told you many times that India negotiates FTAs on its own terms'. He added that trade discussions are on with the European Union and different countries—New Zealand, Oman, US, Chile and Peru. US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that his administration would send letters to individual countries which don't have a deal with the US, specifying the tariffs they would now have to pay to export to America. In April, Trump had announced reciprocal tariffs for most of the trading partners based on their trade surpluses with the US, including a 26% levy on India. The Indian government wants the entire 26% levy to be rolled back and is negotiating with the Trump administration. However, the US' demand for market access across sectors, including sensitive agriculture and dairy products, and insistence on genetically modified crops, have been some sticky areas. On the issue of the two sides inking multiple deals on issues as and when they get agreed, an official said that all possibilities are on the table.
Time of India
15 minutes ago
- Time of India
Eat butter in peace, or be toast in war
Ukraine is not a rich country. The average Ukrainian earns the equivalent of $15,885 - PPP terms - in a year, which is 75% more than the average Indian but slightly less than the average Iranian. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now To catch up with neighbours like Romania ($40,304) and Poland ($43,625), Ukraine must spend more on development, but last year it spent a third of its GDP fighting Russia. Where India with a $4tn economy had a $75bn defence budget in 2024, Ukraine spent $65bn on defence from its meagre and stagnant $180bn GDP. Guns Vs Butter That's the guns/butter trade-off of war. You can have more of one only at the cost of the other. As Eisenhower said: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed..." It was 1953 and, perhaps, Eisenhower remembered how 3mn Indians had starved to death in the Bengal famine a decade earlier. Historians say the calamity wasn't caused by drought but the misplaced priorities of Churchill's wartime cabinet. True, there was a shortage of grain in Bengal in 1943, but London made it worse by continuing to export rice from the province for British troops. The price of grain skyrocketed, and when Indian officials sought an emergency supply of wheat, London declined. Saving Empire became more important than saving people. People suffer It doesn't matter who imposes war on whom - whether Russia invades Ukraine or Afghanistan erupts in civil war - non-combatants pay a high price. A UN Women research paper shows how the Afghan govt spent 37% of its budget on defence and policing in 2019, as against 6% on health. In Mali, another war-torn country, defence expenditure in 2017 was five times higher than the outlay for social programmes. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Contrast that with Kiel Institute's data for G7 nations. Over a 90-year period, from 1872 to 1962, their military expenditure exceeded social programmes, dipping below 20% of their budget only once, immediately after WW-1. But today, these nations spend less than 10% of their budget on defence, as against more than 40% on social expenditure. Under pressure from Trump, Nato members have pledged to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, but don't count on it. No winners War can spur the economy - as it's done in Russia - by increasing demand for killing machines, but data shows a dollar spent on the military produces fewer jobs than a dollar spent on infrastructure, health, education, etc. The Vietnam war may have been good for US defence contractors, but it hurt ordinary Americans by starting an inflation spiral that lasted till the 80s. Likewise, the post-9/11 American wars diverted money away from infrastructure and the social sector, and have run up an $8tn bill. So, guns or butter? Sometimes, countries - like Ukraine - don't have a choice, but when they do - like Russia - they should pick butter, and a loaf of Borodinsky.
