Tag: steel

Government monitoring impact of cheap steel imports from China on domestic industry

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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India  is closely monitoring impact of cheap steel imports from China on domestic steel industry, the government said in a statement.

India issues quality control order for 53 products to prevent sub-standard steel imports from China and other nations, the statement quoted the junior trade minister as saying in parliament.

India has imposed anti-dumping duty on straight length bars, rods of alloy steel imported from China, the statement said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India in talks with US over steel tariff exemption, says government official

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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India is in talks with the United States over exemptions on steel tariffs, the country’s steel secretary said on Friday.

India will also seek relief from Canada over quotas and tariffs next month, Binoy Kumar, the top most bureaucrat in India’s steel ministry, told reporters, as Indian steel companies have been affected by Canadian tariffs.

“We need to look after the interests of the domestic steel industry and hence made a request for exemption,” Kumar said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Manufacturing sector posts strong sales growth in Q2: RBI

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Manufacturing sector, particularly textile and iron and steel segments, maintained its pace of sales growth in the second quarter of 2018-19 as compared to the year-ago period, the RBI said on Wednesday.

Demand condition in the manufacturing sector “maintained its pace in the September quarter 2018-19 as reflected in strong sales growth (year-on-year)”, as per the RBI analysis of 2,700 listed private sector non-financial companies.

“The manufacturing sector sales growth was mainly supported by robust demand conditions in chemical and chemical products, iron and steel, and petroleum products industries coupled with significant improvement recorded by textile industry,” the RBI said.

The central bank said heavy moderation was seen in the sales growth of motor vehicles and other transport equipment, driven in part by a large adverse base effect, and pharmaceutical and medicine industries.

The information technology (IT) sector also recorded further improvement in sales growth over the year-ago period.

The manufacturing sector continued to record strong growth in net profits, which received support from other income.

The RBI said companies in manufacturing sector posted a net profit of Rs 47,100 crore in the reported quarter, up 29.4 per cent from the same period last year. The data is based on abridged financial results of 1,734 companies in the manufacturing sector.

“Despite continuous contraction in the telecommunication, the services (non-IT) sector posted a turnaround riding on the support from wholesale and retail trade,” the RBI said.

The profit of IT sector, based on data of 172 firms, was Rs 17,700 crore in the second quarter, up 5.8 per cent over the July-September period of 2017-18.

As per the RBI, the combined sales of 2,700 companies was Rs 9,81,800 crore in the September quarter, up 18.2 per cent from the year-ago period.
Their net profit was Rs 71,900 crore, an increase of 41.7 per cent year-on-year.

On expenditure front, manufacturing companies continued to face rising input cost (cost of raw materials, staff cost) pressures. In case of IT sector, staff costs accelerated in tandem with the improvement in sales growth, the RBI said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Pains of Steel: After 2018 of raw material scarcity and insolvency glut, 2019 of resolutions awaited

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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It saw financial stress resulting into loan defaults and even bankruptcies, followed by insolvency-driven buyout attempts by global giants as well as by existing promoters, but all seem to have landed in courts — It actually required nerves of steel to stay in this sector during 2018.

To make things even worse, availability of raw material at right price remains a concern for the steel sector and then there is the threat of cheap dumping from China, say experts and industry players.

The government, however, is keeping a brave face and its focus areas for the new year include increasing per capital steel consumption, finding new markets for India-made steel and a shift in the industry’s attention towards production of special steel.

The government has fixed a target to ramp up the country’s crude steel production to 300 million tonnes (MT) by 2030 — from about 138 MT at the end of March 2018. The target for the per capital steel consumption is 160 kg by 2030.

“The per capita steel consumption in India is at around 68 kg as against the world average of around 208 kg. It is very low,” Union Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh told PTI.

India is number two in the world in terms of steel output and as the production is growing, it needs to look for markets locally as well as outside India, he said.

“Market is possible when consumption also increases. Our focus in the new year will be to increase the per capita steel consumption India,” he said. The focus in 2019 would also be on increasing the output of special steel in India, the minister said.

The new year, however, will see some decision by courts on who would end up with private sector assets that went for insolvency-triggered sale and saw an intense battle among established global players, new entrants and even existing promoters.

In the meantime, lenders are waiting to save their own skin in the game and estimates suggest they may have already lost thousands of crores of rupees out of to their huge loans having gone bad.

When the RBI decided on its first list of 12 companies for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), with a collective unpaid debt of an estimated Rs 2 lakh crore, there were quite a few steel companies and the top government functionaries had grandly said at that time that all bad loans have gone out of the steel sector.

Under the IBC resolution process, the control of a company got transferred to a Committee of Creditors, which further needs to evaluate proposals from various players to revive the company or liquidate it.

However, the resolution seems to be far from over even after months, at least for some steel companies, as the cases have landed in courts with even erstwhile promoters making vehement attempts to regain control of their companies, facing buyout bids from global and domestic players.

According to a Crisil report, steel companies with 22 MT capacity were referred to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in the RBI’s first round of resolution of stressed assets.

An eventual resoltion may have multiple benefits as it will resolve more than half of the sector’s outstanding debt, move a large proportion of production capacity to stronger hands and consolidate the industry.

And steel sector is considered very important for the overall economic health of the country, given its use in a number of key industries like automobile, process plants, capital goods and defence equipments.

Minister Singh said the Indian steel sector is full of opportunities and the country must aim to grab the numero uno position in quality steel production.
Talking about the goals that the steel ministry has set for itself for 2019, new Steel Secretary Binoy Kumar said steel players, especially the PSUs, will have to produce more value-added products.

The aim will definitely be to increase the output of special steel in the country, while the PSUs would need to ramp up their overall production, he said.
Kumar also assured that the government would strive to ensure better availability of raw materials, which has been a key demand of the industry.
Jayanta Roy, Senior Vice President at rating agency ICRA Limited, said the closure of mining at the country’s largest iron ore miner NMDC’s Donimalai mine in Karnataka will affect the availability of iron, especially for south Indian mills.

“Authorities need to immediate steps to resolve the issue to avoid shortage,” he said.

Iron ore and coking coal are two key raw materials used in steel manufacturing, while coal is also used in a big way by captive power plants to generate power.

According to Indian Captive Power Producers Association (ICPPA), whose members include players from key sectors such as steel and aluminium, most captive power producers are facing severe shortage of the fuel which may lead to closure of plants.

“The coal-based steel, power and aluminium plants continue to face supply-related issues due to unavailability of adequate railway rakes,” ICPPA secretary general Rajiv Agarwal said.

The Steel Secretary said the government is also taking measures to resolve the logistic issue for smooth supply of raw materials.

Indian Steel Association (ISA) Secretary General Bhaskar Chatterjee said the domestic steel demand outlook in China is not optimistic and this situation raises fear of large export volumes from that country.

“We hope that 2019 will not see the spectre of large scale dumping of steel in India,” he said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India holds off raising import tariffs on some US goods until January 31

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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India has held off until end-January 2019 raising tariffs on select goods from the United States, deferring for the fourth time retaliatory action against higher import tariffs imposed by the US on steel and aluminium, the government said on Monday.

Angered by Washington’s refusal to exempt it from higher steel and aluminium tariffs, New Delhi said in June that it would raise import tax from Aug. 4 on some US products, including almonds, walnuts and apples.

India further delayed imposing higher taxes thrice until Dec. 17, and with negotiations still going on, decided to defer the date again.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

WTO to rule in more spats over US tariffs

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The World Trade Organization agreed on Tuesday to hear complaints from Switzerland and India over US steel and aluminium tariffs, bringing the total number of such complaints it is reviewing to nine.

The WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) has agreed to establish panels to review US President Donald Trump’s decision to hit a long line of countries with tariffs of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium.

The DSB accepted on Tuesday to create separate panels to hear the complaints by Switzerland and India, after the two countries filed a second request for their cases to be heard.

The DSB already agreed last month to establish panels to hear disputes brought by the European Union, China, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia and Turkey.

Marking a departure from a decades-long US-led drive for free trade, Trump has justified the steep tariffs with claims that massive flows of imports to the United States threaten national security.

Washington invoked a rarely used WTO exception that allows a country to take “any action which it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests”.

The decision to establish the panels follows rounds of failed consultations between the parties and mark an escalation in an ongoing showdown at the WTO around Trump’s controversial trade policies.

Under WTO regulations, parties in a dispute can block a first request for the creation of an arbitration panel, but if the parties make a second request, it is all but guaranteed to go through.

Russia on Tuesday blocked a first request from Washington to establish a dispute panel to rule on the legality of retaliatory tariffs imposed by Moscow.

But the DSB has already agreed to hear US complaints over similar retaliatory duties imposed by Canada, China, the European Union, and Mexico on US imports, and should soon agree to hear the US complaint over the Russian tariffs.

Also on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia blocked a first request from Qatar for a panel to hear its complaint over Saudi Arabia’s alleged failure to provide adequate protection of the intellectual property rights of Qatari-based entities.

Qatar launched the dispute in October, accusing Saudi Arabia of blocking Qatari-owned broadcaster beIN and of not taking proper action against piracy of beIN’s content by a Saudi-based piracy outlet called “beoutQ”.

According to a Geneva trade official, Saudi Arabia insisted Tuesday that the severance of diplomatic ties with Qatar made it impossible to conduct any dispute settlement in the matter.

Evoking the issue of national security, it insisted that a WTO panel had no power to rule in the matter and could not be turned into a venue to resolve national security disputes.

The US, Egypt and Bahrain came out in support of the Saudi position at Tuesday’s meeting of the DSB, while the European Union and Turkey spoke up for Qatar’s call for a panel, the Geneva trade official said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Steel companies may go for expansion through brownfield route

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The steel sector, which is on a consolidation mode now under the IBC process amidst strong domestic demand, is unlikely to witness any greenfield expansion as mill-owners are likely to go in for brownfield
expansion at least for the next half a decade or so, say
industry players and analysts.

Domestic steel demand touched 91 million tonne (mt) in fiscal 2018, making the country the third largest consumer of the alloy in the world. In FY18, domestic demand grew by 8 percent, while globally it grew by 5 percent.

According to Crisil, companies with around 22 million tonne crude steel capacity are under various National Company Law Tribunal (NCLTs). These were from the first round of the stressed assets resolution process by the Reserve Bank.

These capacities have brownfield expansion potential of another 20-21 mt based on their environment clearance andregulatory filings, the Crisil report said. “Already the flat steel space has some major players and with most of the big ones coming under NCLT, the dynamics of a more consolidated industry play out now. Also, spreads between landed and domestic prices are expected to narrow now,” Rahul Prithiani, a director at Crisil Research, told PTI.

He further said for the next four to five years, the expansion will most likely be only through brownfield development. “Demand is expected to be quite robust at nearly 7-8 percent. But capacity addition, except for in the case of NMDC, is largely going to be brownfield. Therefore, Tata Steel and JSW Steel are likely to put in low capex for expansion.

Currently the overall capacity utilisation of all the steel plants is 80-81 percent, which will increase once they commence expansion,” Prithiani added.

Tata Steel, which acquired Bhushan Steel (5.6 mt) through NCLT and Usha Martin speciality long steel products (1mt) through a bilateral deal for Rs 4,300-4,700 crore, isplanning to ramp up its domestic capacity to 30 mt per annum by 2025 from the current 13 mt.

While Bhushan Steel deal is closed, Usha Martin deal is yet to be completed. With Bhushan Steel’s capacity of 5.6 mt, Tata Steel has capacity of 18.6 mt now.

“We will be ramping up capacity of both Bhushan Steel and Usha Martin,” Tata Steel managing director TV Narendran had recently said, adding they will also be massively ramping up the Kalinganagar mill.

JSW Steel has plans to increase its capacity by 40 percent from 18 mt to 25 mt soon then further scale it up to 45 mt by 2030. This will include doubling of its Vijayanagar steel plant capacity to 23 mt from 12 mt now, as well as the Dolvi plant to 12 mt.

JSW Steel is operating out of seven locations apart from three plants which produce basic steel. In addition to expanding the existing steel mills, the company will snap up more distressed assets, joint managing
director and group chief financial officer Seshagiri Rao had said recently.

The company has submitted a higher bid to snap up Bhushan Power & Steel to the NCLT. To expand its presence in the Eastern states, JSW
Steel had announced a greenfield project in Odisha, which is likely to add another 10-12 mt to its capacity

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

WTO to set up panels to rule on US tariff disputes

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The United States and opponents of President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs both confirmed their wish to litigate on Wednesday, triggering the procedure for World Trade Organization dispute hearings, a Geneva trade official said.

China, the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Norway, and Russia all confirmed they would escalate their disputes by starting adjudication proceedings, while the United States confirmed its wish for dispute panels against Canada, China and the EU.

Similar requests by Turkey against the United States and by the United States against Mexico are likely to be confirmed later on Wednesday. The WTO also agreed to a US request for a dispute panel to rule on a US intellectual property complaint against China.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

WTO upholds Japan’s complaint over India’s safeguard on steel imports

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute panel largely upheld Japan’s complaint against a safeguard duty imposed by India on steel imports for two-and-a-half years, a ruling published on Tuesday showed.

The ruling, which can be appealed by either side, said India had broken the WTO rules and urged India to take corrective action, even though the disputed duties ended in March this year. The corrective action is for potential duties retroactively to be put on imported steel.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Railways increases freight rates for major commodities by almost 9%

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The railways has effected a 8.75-percent increase in freight rates for major commodities such as coal, steel, iron ore, and raw materials for steel plants, according to an official statement on Wednesday.

“The decision to rationalise freight rates will result in additional revenue generation for Indian Railways to the tune of Rs 3,344 crore. The additional revenue will further help enhance various aspects of Railways including safety, service, punctuality,” the statement said.

The freight rates for food grains, flours, pulses, fertilisers, salt and sugar have not been increased, keeping in mind farmers and the common man. Freight rates for cement and petroleum products, including diesel, have also not been increased.

Haulage charges for containers have been increased by 5 percent and freight rates of other small goods have been increased by 8.75 percent.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow