Faced with strong lobbying from user industries and the Ministry of Commerce, the Indian government is expected to prune the list of 173 steel products under the minimum import price (MIP) regime, an official at India’s Ministry of Steel said on Thursday, May 5.
The official said that the list could be brought down to around 150 steel product categories though the exact number of steel products to be brought out of the MIP regime will be determined after detailed data analysis.
The Ministry of Steel in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce will initiate a detailed data analysis of levels of import shipments product-wise and price increases for domestic products since the MIP was imposed in February this year, the official said.
The pruning of the list of products under the MIP is likely to be announced when the import protection measure comes up for scheduled review next month, the official said.
Several domestic steel producers too have pointed out that the price of local steel products have “moved up too much, too fast” and, under the circumstances, the stand taken by the Ministry of Commerce for exempting more products from the MIP is justified, the official added.