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Even as Ministry plans to appeal to WTO... -- Steel exports to US surge

G. Rambabu

NEW DELHI, June 18

THE Ministry of Steel seems to have been caught on the wrong foot. Even as it has been complaining that Indian steel exporters are severely affected by the anti-dumping duties slapped by the US, steel exports to the country are booming.

According to the latest trade estimates of the US Department of Commerce (DoC), Indian steel exports to the country have shown a remarkable growth of over 552 per cent in April 2000, over the corresponding month in the previous year.

As against 0.36 lakh tonnes of steel exports in April 1999, the quantity of steel products exported in April 2000 reads 2.35 lakh tonnes. On a month-to-month basis too, the growth has been equally impressive at 251 per cent, spurting from just around 0.6 7 lakh tonnes in March 2000.

This assumes significance because even as the Steel Ministry is in touch with the Commerce Ministry to file an appeal with the Dispute Settlement Board of the WTO, Indian steel exports to the US seem to be gathering momentum.

While it remains a fact that in the whole of fiscal 1999-2000, steel exports were hit by the US actions, the trend has reversed in the first month of the current year. With this apparent turnaround, it may now be difficult to justify its appeal to the WT O.

However, according to official sources, India can still go ahead with its appeal to the WTO, because if one looks at the composition of Indian steel exports to the US, exports of all the products which have been facing anti-dumping duties continue to rem ain very low. In fact, the product-mix of the exports are quite different now, they said.

More than 90 per cent of the steel exports in April constituted just two products, hot rolled (HR) sheets and plates in coils. During the month, 1.59 lakh tonnes of HR sheets and 0.52 lakh tonnes of plates in coils were exported, which amounted to 68 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively of the total Indian steel exports.

The other 20 steel products together constituted just 10 per cent of the exports. They include cold rolled sheets, wire rods, galvanised sheets and strip, standard pipe, wire drawn, HR bars, CR bars, pressure tubing, oil country goods, mechanical tubing, CR strip, HR strip, line pipe, stainless pipe and tubing, cut to length plates, blooms, billets and slabs, black plate, structural shapes heavy and tool steel.

What is more, they noted that the data compiled by the DoC is based on arrivals at US ports. The export orders could have been contracted at much earlier periods, and the consignments would have left the Indian shores later. Also, there have always been differences between the Indian data and the US data. Therefore, one has to wait for data of exports from the Indian side.