— PHOTO: ANU PUSHKARNA

TO EXPORT OR NOT: Minister for Steel, Ram Vilas Paswan (right), S. K. Roongta (left), Chairman, SAIL, and R. S. Pandey, Secretary, Ministry of Steel, at the launch of a steel promotion campaign in New Delhi on Tuesday.

NEW DELHI: The Centre is unlikely to hike the export duty on iron ore from Rs. 300 to Rs. 600 a tonne as demanded by primary steel producers in view of the major capacity expansions in the offing.

Rejecting the steel industry's demand for further fiscal steps to discourage iron ore exports, Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, while interacting with newspersons after launching the nationwide Steel Promotion Campaign organised by the Institute of Steel Development and Growth (INSDAG) here on Tuesday, said: "I do not want to hurt the mining industry. But there should not be a situation where steel utilities are compelled to import iron ore to meet their production needs in future.'' He noted that the ore requirements of the steel producers would have to be factored in while taking any final decision.

Turning to steel production, Mr. Paswan said India would be producing 175 million tonnes of steel by 2020 as compared to 110 million tonnes envisaged in the National Steel Policy and thus be second to China globally in steel production.

The country, he said, would produce 80 million tonnes of steel by 2012 as against the policy target of 60 million tonnes. Steel Secretary R. S. Pandey told newspersons that both production and consumption of steel had witnessed a growth of 10-15 per cent in the past few years and this had lured a large number of investors for greater capacity addition. "Given a conducive policy environment, we should be producing 100 million tonnes of steel by 2015-16 and 200 million tonnes by 2020. We need to understand that China has turned into a net exporter of steel, which shall have implications for us. We have to be competitive against any kind of dumping,'' Mr. Pandey said.

PTI reports:

FIMI denial

Iron ore exporters on Tuesday denied that exports had surged by 34 per cent after Finance Minister P. Chidambaram proposed to levy export duty of Rs. 300 a tonne on iron ore and slammed the steel industry's allegation as `gross misrepresentation of facts.' "Exports in March are down by 33 per cent over exports in March 2006 as against the claim of the ISA that exports have surged by 34 per cent,'' the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI) said in a statement here. If 10 per cent average increase witnessed in the first 11 months is taken into account, exports in March will be down by 40 per cent. "This is only due to the levy of export duty on iron ore,'' it argued.

The FIMI said ore exports during March 2006 were 10.57 million tonnes, while during the first twenty days of this month it was 4.98 million tonnes.

On the allegation by the ISA that stand alone miners were crushing lumps into fines, the FIMI said lumps were fetching better prices than fines and that there was no restriction on export of lumps.

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