the government on thursday extended the mimimum price regime for steel imports for another two months but slashed the list of such items to 66 from the 173 notified in februray this year the brief extension of this relief clearly shows that while the government is mindful of the problems faced by domestic steelmakers it is unwilling to make the measure permanent at the cost of the user industry or appear protectionist a price floor on imports of 173 steel items was imposed in february this year to safeguard the domestic steel industryalready struggling to maintain margins and repay loansagainst a flood of cheap imports from china japan and korea altough steelmakers have been lobbying hard for the extension of mip user industries such as auto companies and a host of process equipment makers are strongly opposing it as the mip makes their raw material costlier even a japanese business delegation has voiced its concern over mip why does domestic industry need mip so much domestic production up 38 in q1 fy17 while demand growth is way behind at 08 per cent steel sector plagued with debt burden of over 3 lakh crore companies say mip necessary to help improve profitability and repay loans pointers from rbi in terms of outstanding amount the iron and steel industry saw the highest slippage 78 per cent of standard accounts to the npa category rbis stress tests reveal that in a severe stress scenario the iron and steel industry which had the highest gnpa ratio at 304 per cent as of march 2016 could see its gnpa ratio moving up to 336 per cent by march 2017 is the situation same in other countries the us canada thailand are taking protective measures to check steel imports too closing of borders has led to regionalization of steel market with producers selling at a higher price in domestic market compared to a lower export price what about other stakeholders end users of steel upset automobile companies plant and process equipment makers bodies like engineering exports promotion council eepc are against moves like mip since it makes their main input steel costlier a japanese delegation has raised questions about mip and such restrictive trade measures eepc says there is no case for mip extension as import volume of 173 tariff items went down to 043 mt in june 16 against 101 mt in jan 16 by rakhi mazumdar et bureau published on aug 8 2016 at 0940 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights