NEW DELHI | Feb 10, 2016: Seeking Centre's intervention in rescuing iron and steel sectors, which are facing multiple problems, industry body ICC has demanded removal of 6 per cent duty on coking coal, including 2.5 per cent import duty.

It has also emphasised the need to ramp up iron ore production to meet the needs of steelmakers.

"A duty of 2.5 per cent was imposed on coking coal in 2014. This has increased the cost of steel making in India that is impacting the competitiveness of manufacturing steel products in India," Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has said in a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Urging the finance minister to remove this import duty on coking coal in the ensuing budget, ICC said imports of coking coal had been without any duty for several years before 2014.

Also seeking removal of clean energy cess, the body said a cess of Rs 200 per tonne on coking coal equates to 3.5 per cent duty.

"Coking coal is different from thermal coal and the clean energy cess should be applicable only on thermal coal and not coking coal. Thermal coal is used for providing heat and during the process, the carbon burns and produces carbon dioxide and hence there is logic of imposing clean energy cess on thermal coal," ICC Director General Rajeev Singh said in the letter.

Singh added that coking coal is used for producing metallurgical coke and during the process no carbon is burnt and hence no carbon dioxide is produced.

"There is no substitute to coking coal as a raw material for production of metallurgical coke which is required for steel making whereas in case of thermal coal alternate sources of energy such as hydro, wind, solar etc are available," the letter said.

In a separate letter to Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, ICC said the iron ore production needs to be ramped up to rated capacity of mine.

"In Odisha, against a capacity of 90 million tonnes per annum for captive mines, the annualised production rate for the current year is 50 MTPA," the letter said.

It also demanded that the entire ore production should be sold through auction to avoid hoarding saying, "The total stockpile of iron ore is approx 128 MT, out of which Odisha has a stockpile of approx 77 MT."

Demanding sale of stock through auction, the chamber has alleged the prices being quoted by mining companies are abnormally high and unviable for steelmakers.

Also demanding reduction of floor price to cost of production during e-auction of iron ore, the Chamber has stressed that there is a need to fix fair floor price as though steel prices have fallen drastically, iron ore prices have not fallen correspondingly.

Also, it urged the government to finalise a roadmap for auction of non-captive iron ore mining leases.

(Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/)