ISSDA will be at the verge of bankruptcy if duties are not reinforced on Chinese and Indonesian imports.Indian Stainless Steel Development Association (ISSDA), India’s apex stainless steel body, has voiced concerns about the impending adverse impact on domestic industry due to the temporary revocation of trade remedial duties on importing stainless steel, as announced in this year’s Union Budget.
ISSDA, along with four major associations representing MSME stainless steel producers, namely The Wazirpur Industrial Estate Welfare Society, Delhi; Rajasthan Stainless Steel Re-rollers Association, Jodhpur, Rajasthan; Jagadhri Stainless Steel Re-roller Association, Haryana; and Stainless Steel Re-rollers Association, Ahmedabad, Gujarat has urged the government to reconsider this step as it will distort the domestic market by flooding it with subsidized stainless steel from China and Indonesia, and will lead several MSME players to the verge of bankruptcy.
While China has over 30% surplus capacity for stainless steel production, huge capacity additions backed by Chinese investments have brought the installed production capacity of Indonesia to 30 lakh tonnes in the last 2-3 years, along with an additional 25 lakh tonne capacity in the pipeline. Interestingly, Indonesia’s domestic consumption is a mere 0.2 lakh tonne.
Consequentially, the two nations have been dumping subsidized and substandard stainless steel products in India and other global economies in heavy volumes and unregulated manner in the past several years. China and Indonesia are also known to provide non-WTO compliant subsidies to the tune of 20-30% to their domestic manufacturers, rendering the global stainless steel market significantly destabilized. Consequentially, all economies have countered this irrational dumping by enforcing additional trade remedial duties