Increased domestic steel intake helped save Rs 5000cr:Minister

Union Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh Sunday said nearly Rs 5,000 crore has been saved since the new steel policy with focus on quality has come into effect.

Singh, who was in the megapolis to attend an industry award function instituted by Steel Users Federation of India (SUFI), told reporters that the government plans to impose the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) on all steel products.

"Currently, the BIS is imposed on 86 per cent of products and we plan to take it to 100 percent," he said without putting a timeline for implementation.

When asked about the impact of the imposition of the BIS so far, he said, "at present you may feel there is no impact of this. But within one year since the introduction of the steel policy to encourage domestic steel, we have saved nearly Rs 5,000 crore. With BIS, we have been able to give level playing field to the secondary market," Singh said.

He said that during the last four years, the per capita steel consumption in the country has gone up from 56 kg to 68 kg.

The minister noted that the country's steel production target is 300 million tonnes by 2030 and "we have already reached 84 million tonnes which is 5.5 per cent more in the first nine months".

"The steel policy also encourages innovation. We have welcomed participation from foreign players for the transfer of technology and FDI. But if someone gets technology from outside, it will not help us much so it is necessary we have innovation domestically," Singh said.

He further said the Steel Research and Technology Mission has been constituted, which has a corpus of Rs 200 crore, to spearhead research and development activities in the industry.

"Initially, innovations were being undertaken in the secondary steel market but that was in isolation. But with this institute we can integrate the technology and others can also use it," he added.

When asked whether there were plans to impose anti-dumping duty for steel, he said currently there are no such plans.