LONDON (Metal-Pages) 09-Feb-11. The Indian Ferro Alloy Producers' Association (IFAPA) has called on the national government to increase import duties on ferro-alloys to protect the domestic industry, according to national press reports on Wednesday.
The IFAPA says it wants the current import duties on ferro-alloys, with the exception of ferro-nickel which is 100% imported, to increase to 7.5%, from 5%.
“The current level of duty is not sufficient to protect the domestic industry. The government has over the years reduced the duty on ferro-alloys, resulting in domestic players reducing capacity,” IFAPA secretary general T S Sundaresan said in a report in The Business Standard.
If the government will not increase the import duty then the IFAPA says the import duty on manganese ores should be scrapped, from currently 2%, according to The Times of India.
The Indian ferro alloys industry has a production capacity of 4.04 million tonnes, which is enough to meet a domestic need to produce more than 120 million tonnes of steel a year, it said.
The government had been cutting its ferro-alloys import duty since 2005, finally bringing it down to nil by 2009.
However, it reintroduced the duty to 5% later that year after calls from the domestic industry that pointed to a jump in imports to almost 188,000 tonnes in 2009, from some 97,000 tonnes in 2005.
Currently, the Indian ferro-alloys industry is operating at only 65% of its annual production capacity, the IFAPA said, which is also calling for Indian power rates to be cut to a level on par with international prices, which it says are about a quarter of its domestic power costs.
In noble alloys, the IFAPA has called on the government to abolish the current 7.5% import duty on vanadium pentoxide, which is in short supply in India, as well as urging the State to waive customs duties on manganese ore, chrome ore, molybdenum ore/oxide, tungsten ore and wolframite ore.
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