Import of metals may get tougher

India will further raise barriers on import of metals as investigations are going on to impose anti-dumping duty on steel and safeguard duty on aluminium. The Indian industry has been demanding the government to start investigations to impose safeguard duty on the import of copper also.

Despite promises agai-nst resorting to protectionist measures, almost all countries are reacting to slow growth by trying to protect their domestic industries by raising trade barriers. During the height of financial crisis, the G20 nations had pledged to refrain from erecting any new trade barriers.

India has already imp-osed minimum import price (MIP) on 173 steel products and imposed safeguard import taxes on some steel products until 2018. While MIP is till August, there is demand to replace MIP with anti-dumping duty as it will be difficult to challenge at WTO.

The domestic steel industry has been claiming that its margins are under-pressure due to cheap imports from China, as well as Russia, Japan and South Korea.

On the negative side, however, there are many steel user industries that are against imposing duties on steel as it impacts their cost of production.

Auto industry SIAM director-general Vishnu Mathur indicated that though imposition of anti-dumping duty on steel will increase cost of production for the sector, they will not have a problem if investigations found that it was been dumped in India to harm local industry.

The government is also looking at imposing saf-eguard duty on imports of aluminium due to heavy imports from China and West Asia.