India’s Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) has recommended quantitative restrictions on imports of certain grades of low-ash metallurgical coke from 11 countries, according to an official notification issued on May 9. The market has been confused by the announcement and Indian steel mills are likely to lobby against this proposal, as it will cut their opportunities to diversify raw material procurement, SteelOrbis learned during the Singapore Coking Coal conference in Singapore held on May 9-10.
The quantitative restrictions have been proposed on “low-ash metallurgical coke, that is, having ash content below 18 percent falling under the HS Code 2704 excluding coke fines, coke breeze and ultra-low phosphorous metallurgical coke with phosphorous content up to 0.030 percent with size of 30 mm with five percent size tolerance for use in ferroalloy manufacturing,” according to the notification. “The document was published only last night. It is too early to comment or make any conclusions,” a major Indian buyer said.
The quota of the met coke to be imported to India has been proposed at not more than 2.85 million mt, which is around 1 million mt less than the real imports for the past year. The restriction on imports would be applicable for imports from Australia, China, Colombia, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK and other countries.
Country-wise restrictions recommended per year are 157,292 mt for China, 132,729 mt for Indonesia, 102,553 mt for Australia, 499,542 mt for Colombia, 419,960 mt for Japan, 178,365 mt for Russia and the highest is 1.013 million mt for Poland. “Basically, this will cut competition in terms of prices of imports from China and Indonesia, which were helping Indian mills, when [import] coking coal was high. Mills will try to at least postpone this decision, I think,” a market source commented.
The recommendations of the DGTR have followed complaints filed by domestic metallurgical coke producers BLA Coke Private Ltd., Jindal Coke Ltd., Saurashtra Fuels Private Ltd., Vedanta Malco Energy Ltd. and VISA Coke Ltd. The domestic producers alleged that the product under consideration was being imported into India in such increased quantities and under such conditions as to cause injury to the domestic industry.