Approvals board calls for review of steel safeguard duty proposal.

Virtually rejecting the interim proposal of the Directorate General of Safeguards (DGS) for imposition of about 25 per cent safeguard duty on the import of hot rolled (HR) sheets, coils and strips to prevent the domestic steel industry from sustaining injury, the empowered Board of Approvals today asked the Directorate to initiate talks with user industries and furnish a fresh proposal soon.

The BoA’s move is likely to make secondary steel producers happy, but is bound to cause consternation among primary steel makers who have been campaigning for imposition of the duty to protect utilities from cheaper imports. The Board, headed by commerce secretary G K Pillai, viewed the DGS’s interim recommendations for imposing 20-25 per cent duty as an act-in-hurry and, in course of a lengthy meeting today, inferred that it saw little merit in it as there was no apparent threat to the domestic steel industry.