Secondary aluminium industry players urge govt to remove duty on scrap import

Secondary aluminium industry body MRAI today urged the government to bring basic customs duty on import of aluminium scarp to zero from 2.5 per cent at present.

The Aluminium Association of India (AAI) wants the duty to be raised to 10 per cent, a move which will take away jobs of thousands of people working in the downstream and ancillary industry, Metal Recycling Association of India (MRAI) said in a statement.

"We are surprised to see that even after knowing this, a delegation of the (aluminium) association met Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Ramesh Abhishek recently and requested to increase the duty to 10 per cent," MRAI President Sanjay Mehta said in the statement.

A hike in duty would restrict the availability of scrap for recycled aluminium for more than 5,000 units in the country, he said.

AAI does not represent the entire stakeholders of the aluminium industry in the country, he said, adding that it only represents the primary producers of the sector and more than 50 per cent stakeholders are in the secondary aluminium recycling sectors, closely associated with MRAI.

The increase of duty will have an adverse affect on small and medium players of the sector, who make products such as alloys by recycling, as it will shoot up their input cost, Dr Kishore Rajpurohit, Executive Committee Member, MRAI, said.

Hence, we request the government to save the small and medium players. Instead of raising the duty, it should abolish it and bring it down to zero, he said.

The association further said that primary aluminium is used in electrical, foils, powder and extrusion, whereas the aluminium scrap is mainly used in alloy ingots, castings which are further used in the automobiles industry and Deox which are used in steel plant for deoxidation.

"Primary producers fix the price of their product by adding the customs duty also to their basic value. Their only intention for increase of custom duty is to get more price from the Indian downstream industry," Mehta said.

Also, they are trying to create monopoly in country by restricting the imports of aluminium scrap by increasing the customs duty, he added.