Budget 2021: Steel industry welcomes lower duties on import of steel

The steel sector saw a lot of indirect tax adjustments in Budget 2021. Reacting to the announcements made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Koushik Chatterjee, CFO & ED of Tata Steel and Seshagiri Rao, Joint MD & Group CFO of JSW Steel said that the steel companies will not be impacted negatively because of lower duties on import of steel.

“I certainly followed the speech in terms of the reduction in duty in some of the imports and I think that is okay and that is good because the MSMEs will have better options. I don’t think it impacts the steel industry much because of the fact that we don’t import those products into India as such. The imports into India are largely from the FTA countries and the integrated steel companies will be fine,” Chatterjee said.

“Reducing duty on import of steel on all products to 7.5 percent and also temporarily suspending the anti-dumping duties and CBDs up to September 30 2021 are the steps taken and are perceived as negative to steel sector. But I perceive them as very positive because domestic prices if we look at, they are much lower than the international prices. So the reduction in duty I don’t think will have any negative impact on the industry,” Rao said.