Minews - India Mines Ministry proposes doubling of import tax on aluminum

(Minews) - India’s mines ministry will ask its counterparts in the government’s finance department to double the import tax on aluminum to counter cheap imports from the Middle East and China.

Producers have sought an increase in custom duty to 10 percent, Mines Secretary Balvinder Kumar said in a phone interview from New Delhi.

“The industry is in a difficult situation and they need some sort of government support to tide over the situation,” he said.

Cheap imports into Asia’s third-biggest economy from the Middle East and China and plunging prices on the London Metal Exchange because of global oversupply have made smelters economically unviable, according to Vedanta Ltd. Prices in London of the metal, used in everything from aircraft to window frames, slumped 18.6 percent in the past year to a six-year low.

“In case of a further fall in prices we will be forced to take recourse to down-scaling of operations as our position would become economically untenable,” Abhijit Pati, chief executive officer for Vedanta’s aluminum business, said Wednesday.

Chinese exports of unwrought aluminum and products grew 35 percent to 2.5 million metric tons in the first half from a year earlier, according to customs data. While the world’s biggest producing nation requires a 15 percent export duty on primary aluminum, it offers a 13 percent tax rebate on shipments of semi-fabricated products.