Mumbai: Engineering exporters’ apex body EEPC India has sent a strong protest to the commerce ministry, alleging that it would be protecting a handful of steel producers if it goes ahead with restricting steel imports by way of fixing the Minimum Import Price (MIP).
This would be at the cost of thousands of small and medium industries who depend on cheap imported steel, it said. In a strong note to the commerce secretary Rita Teotia, EEPC chairman T.S. Bhasin said if the MIPs at a level being debated are imposed, the landed cost of a variety of steel products would more than double, raising a question mark on the sheer survival of the millions of SME export firms which will be forced to pay much higher price for their raw material.
The EEPC said that the ministry was protecting the handful of primary steel producers on the grounds that they are overleveraged and their bank loans could become NPAs. Since June 2015, it pointed out, the steel sector has been provided a range of protection including the raising of import duties by five per cent on all categories of steel and imposition of safeguard duties on more than 62 steel products. Further safeguard measures are being contemplated on steel plates and slabs.
“All this is being done without taking into consideration the impact that such action will have on the MSMEs,” the EEPC said. The engineering export have fallen by over 14 per cent in the first eight months of the current fiscal to $39.85 billion from $46.55 billion in the comparable period of last year.
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