Government reduced export duty on steel, iron ore

New Delhi, 19 November (Language) The Central Government has cut export duty on steel products and iron ore which will come into effect from Saturday. This fee was imposed six months ago.

The Finance Ministry issued a notification in this regard on Friday late night. It was informed that export of specified pig iron and steel products, iron ore pellets will no longer attract duty. Apart from this, export duty on low iron iron ore lumps and fines (having iron content less than 58 per cent) has also been made zero.

At the same time, the export duty on iron ore lumps and fines containing more than 58 percent iron has now been reduced to 30 percent.

According to a government notification, the import duty on anthracite/PCI, coking coal and ferronickel, used as raw materials in the steel industry, has been increased to 2.5 per cent, while coke and semi-coke which were earlier nil. Now it has been increased to five percent on these.

Steel Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had a meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman earlier this week which was attended by senior officials including Revenue Secretary-elect Sanjay Malhotra. After this meeting, it has been decided to cut the fee.

Earlier in May, the Finance Ministry had raised the export duty on pig iron and steel products from ‘nil’ to 15 per cent. The move was aimed at discouraging exports and increasing domestic availability to bring down prices.