Iron ore prices rally globally, but in India trade policies scuttle miners

That Indian iron ore exports would once again be dismally low in the financial year gone by leaving the miners fuming about their being left with mountains of pithead stocks was a foregone conclusion. As it would happen, Indian merchant exporters could not take advantage of the catastrophic rupture of Vale-owned tailings dam linked to a major iron ore mine in Brazil’s Minas Gerais in January. The death of at least 230 people because of the accident forced the world’s largest iron ore miner to pull 90 million tonnes (mt) of supplies. Irrespective of any commodity, such an occurrence would