Export of finished steel grew 102%

Production

Finished steel production (for sale) saw over 10% growth year-on-year in FY2016–17 at 100.74 million tonnes (mt), while crude steel production grew 8.5% to finish at 97.44 mt. This is in stark contrast to the YoY growth in FY2015–16 which sat at –1.3% and 0.9% respectively.

The trend seems to be continuing into the current financial year, with the provisional growth numbers for FY2017–18 until the month of May showing a 6.4% rise in production compared to the same time last fiscal for finished steel, while crude steel is up 4.8%.

Exports

Domestic steel consumption grew 2.4 during FY2016–17 against the 10% growth in production. In turn, India’s steel exports grew 102% to reach 8.24 mt as compared to a 27% decline in FY2015–16. The top 10 countries exported to account for more 73% of India’s export during the last year.

Exports made up nearly 10% of all production

A further analysis of export data showed a significant change in export trend—8 out of the top 10 countries by growth in FY2016–17 saw a negative growth of exports just the previous year, while the remaining two saw grow rates above 200%.

The top 3 countries by growth are all in India’s eastern neighbourhood—Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Anti-dumping duty to stay

In 2015, the Central Government extended the anti-dumping duty on stainless steel products — instituted in April 2014 — by five years. The duty is based on the margin of dumping and affects the following countries:

• China (57.39%)
• European Union (29.41–52.56%)
• South Africa (12.34–36.91%)
• Chinese Taipei (15.93%)
• Korea (5.39–13.44%)
• USA (9.47%)
• Thailand (4.58–5.39%)

A review of this duty was recently concluded found that while dumping has continued, the net volume has declined since 2014. The Government has decided that the duty will not be revoked in light of this effect and the expected negative impact of such revokation on the domestic steel industry.