Capital goods manufacturers oppose hike in import duty on stainless steel

Process Plant Machinery Manufacturing & Exporting companies have strongly opposed the increase of import duty on flat rolled stainless steel products from 5 per cent to 7.5 per cent in the Union Budget announced in the parliament today.

"The union finance minister justifying the hike has claimed that stainless steel industry is presently suffering from severe under -utilisation of capacity. But the import duty hike only helps one single producer in the country which has more than 80 % of the market share. But the increase is going to affect hundreds of small and medium process plant machinery manufacturers and exporters which have to use high grade stainless steel for its products as per needs of their clients in India and abroad"said V.P.Ramachandran, Secretary, Process Plant and Machinery Association of India (PPMAI).

"More over it is to be noted that import duty on long stainless steel products remains at 5 per cent and India has more than 40 domestic manufacturers of long products and they are exporting 60% of production. And here we have given protection to single manufacturer of flat rolled stainless steel manufacturer." said MR Ramachandran

"The small and medium industry in the country employing lakhs of workers is already facing challenges that Finance Minister is aware of. Various anti dumping duties imposed by the government in past few years at the behest of single manufacturer of flat products had already affected the industry. We demand immediate roll back of the hike and help small and medium manufcaturers to grow in the country" said Mr Ramachandran.

"For our critical industry manufacturing and supplying plant and machinery to high end industries in India and abroad specific required grades and dimensions of stainless steel are required for design safety, quality of the equipments. These dimensions are not available in the domestic market nor manufactured by the local industry. Therefore the plant equipment manufacturer and end users have been sourcing these stainless steel Hot and cold rolled products from global manufacturers since many years." Mr Ramachandran said.

Source : Equity Bulls

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