Posted on 18 Mar 2016
The director general of safeguards has recommended that steel safeguard duty on certain categories of products be continued for two-and-a-half years, the finance ministry department said in a notification.
“The increased imports of ‘PUC’ into India, have caused serious injury and are threatening to cause serious injuries to the domestic producers of PUC and it will be in the public interest to impose safeguard duty on imports of PUC for a period of two years and six months,” the notification read.
PUC is ‘production under consideration’ which are hot-rolled flat products of non-alloy and other alloy steel. The move is expected to protect the domestic steel manufacturers from a growing imports of cheaper steel imports from countries such as China and Russia.
On 14 September, India imposed a provisional safeguard duty of 20% on certain categories of steel for 200 days. The notification put out on Wednesday is the final finding for a safeguard duty on these products. The period of two years and six months would be calculated from the date of the levy of provisional duty.
