Bizmen hail Centre’s decision on import and export duties

Ludhiana: City businessmen, specially those into manufacturing of engineering goods, are upbeat over the recent decisions by the central government to reduce the rates of steel. They are of the view that the measures, specially imposition of duty on steel raw material export and waiving off the custom duty on import of coal and other material used for manufacturing steel, will help the micro small and medium enterprises (MSME) rebound from the deep crisis they have been facing due to the uncontrollable rise in the rates of steel raw material.
Upkar Singh Ahuja, president of Chamber of Industrial and Commerical Undertakings (CICU) said, “Some of the raw material on which the import duty has been removed include coking coal and ferronickel, which are widely used by the steel industries and will lower the cost of domestic industries. This was a long-standing demand of CICU and we had recently taken up these with Union minister of commerce and industry, Piyush Goyal and steel minister Ram Chandra Prasad Singh.”
According to Ahuja, they had also urged ministers that the government should focus on export of finished products made from steel. “We are happy that our suggestions have been accepted by the ministers and already the rates of some types of steel have been reduced from Rs 53,000 per tonne to Rs 50,000 per tonne and we are hoping that the rates will correct further by Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per tonne and more according to different types of steel.”
Pankaj Sharma, general secretary of CICU said, “The decisions taken by the central government will give big boost to MSME industry and also generate more employment, more tax collection. As a result of these decisions, the rates of steel have started going down in open market and stockists having huge quantities of steel raw material have started desperate sales.”
Rajkumar Singla, president of Fastener Supplier Association Ludhiana, said, “This is for the first time in years that central government has taken some positive steps for the engineering product manufacturers. But now it is also government’s duty to ensure that the steel manufacturing companies and their dealers pass on the actual benefit of these measures to the MSME industry or else the entire exercise of lowering the duties on import and increasing these on exports will turn out to be futile.”