Steel industry: Upcoming Budget Critical for India's Steel Industry Growth
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The Indian steel industry will be looking for two key announcements from finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the upcoming Union budget – continued investment in infrastructure and a safeguard duty on the import of the alloy. Steelmakers will also be looking for budgetary announcements around green steel, including incentives and enabling measures that nudge the industry towards higher sustainability.
Large domestic steelmakers including JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Jindal Steel & Power and ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India are aggressively adding fresh capacities in anticipation of a healthy demand growth as the Indian economy marches ahead. The government is aiming for a domestic manufacturing capacity of 300 million tonnes of steel a year, up from 180 million tonnes at the end of FY24. Alos read | India plans mitigation action playbook for high carbon-emitting industries India consumed about 136 million tonnes of steel in FY24, which was 14% higher than the previous year.
Rising imports of steel have been the foremost worry of domestic steelmakers the past year. Inbound steel shipments of steel in 2024 grew 22% compared with the preceding year to 9.2 million tonnes led by a surge in imports from China and Japan. While the volume of imports is small compared with India’s annual steel demand, inexpensive imports are disrupting the prices of domestic steel mills, which claim that the current price levels cannot sustain continued investment in capacity expansion.
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