The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) has urged the Indian government to extend antidumping (AD) duty to imports of stainless steel flat products from China in all grades, widths, shapes and sizes, including hot rolled stainless steel flat products, due to a tremendous increase of 690 percent in imports of stainless steel flat products from China in the first half of the financial year 2013-14 compared to the financial year2009-10.
"The existence of huge surplus capacities of stainless steel flat products in China coupled with numerous governmental benefits provided to the steel industry encourage the Chinese manufacturers to dump their products into India through circumvention of antidumping duties. Large-scale circumvention of anti-dumping duties has led to the rapid rise in imports of cold rolled stainless steel flat products as currently there is no duty below 600 mm and above 1,250 mm and imports are coming in these widths as they are outside the range of antidumping duty," said ASSOCHAM.
ASSOCHAM also shared its concerns about other modes of circumvention like misdeclaring cold rolled flat products as hot rolled flat products, misdeclaration of country of origin, and others.
India is the world's fourth largest producer and third largest consumer of stainless steel and is likely to maintain this momentum during the course of the next five to six years and the domestic stainless steel market is expected to register double-digit growth. Besides, Indian stainless steel producers have made massive investments towards modernization and capacity enhancement to cater to this growing market especially in the flat products segment that accounts for over 70 percent of the overall stainless steel market, according to ASSOCHAM.
