Exporters want iron ore duty abolished

In pre-budget submission, say the high export duty is impacting earnings

Iron ore exporters have asked the government to abolish export duty on low grade fines, which are not used in domestic steel mills.

In a pre-budget sumission to the finance minister Arun Jaitley, iron ore exporters' association said, "Iron ore fines are hardly consumed by domestic steel mills. Such ore is used normally as landfills resulting into huge loss in foreign exchange earnings."

Earlier, these fines were sold to Chinese steel mills, but this become unviable because of the 30% export duty. 

"Abolishing this duty will help earn huge forex eaenings," said the association in the submission. 

The prevailing high duty makes Indian ore costlier than even Australian and Brazilian ore. 

Industry sources said there is a huge stock of low grade ore lying at India's easrern coasts. 

In the pre-mining ban era in 2012, Indian exporters were shipping over 100 million tonne of ore largely to China.

The Federation of Indian Minerals Industries (FIMI) secretary general R K Sharma said the duty is not needed and should be abolished from all categories of iron ore.