 "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted by the newly sworn-in ministers as he leaves after the swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. Photo: PTI")
Chaudhary Birender Singh swapped his portfolio with Narendra Singh Tomar albeit the ministry of mines allotted to younger colleague Piyush Goyal. Singh, who earlier held the charge of the ministries of rural development, panchayati raj and drinking water and sanitation, now will be the minister of steel.
The 70-year-old law graduate from Haryana’s Rohtak would now have to preside over an ailing sector desperately looking for protection from the government.
With a debt burden estimated at Rs 2 lakh crore, steel besides power and roads are at the core of distress in the banking sector. The steel industry is reeling under severe stress for the past couple of years due to cheap imports, subdued demand and poor prices. The government has extended its support to the sector in the form of slapping a slew of anti-dumping and safeguard duties and imposing a minimum import price on 173 steel products.
MIP was imposed on 173 products, in February 2016, to curb cheap imports mainly from China, Japan and Korea in the range of $341-$752 per tonne. India’s steel consumption growth improved to 4.6 per cent during 2015-16 from 3.1 per cent in 2014-15, driven by demand from the automobile and road construction sectors, a sustained recovery in other steel intensive sectors, like capital goods and infrastructure, is still elusive.
Demand for domestic finished steel production, on the other hand, fell 1.9 per cent during 2015-16, as a substantial chunk of the incremental domestic demand was captured by the steel imports. Despite a slowdown post September 2015, India’s steel imports still managed to register over 25 per cent annual growth in FY2016, primarily helped by government interventions. Although MIP is scheduled to expire next month, its extension is crucial for the industry that is yet to recover fully.
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After taking charge, Singh said that he wants to make "the steel sector progressive and globally competitive" in order to face the challenges posed by the current world scenario.
Singh, an outsider for BJP, is the grandson of peasant leader from Haryana Sir Chhotu Ram. For good part of his political career, Singh was with Congress but joined Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014. As rural development minister, he piloted amendments to the land acquisition law which the NDA government later withdrew because of popular opposition.
Being the sanitation minister, he also was in-charge of the government’s flagship programme Swach Bharat Abhiyan aimed at cleaning and providing toilets across the country. But now with only steel ministry that deals with industry issues, the people touch would be missing in his sector. Eight public sector companies and three technical institutions would, however, add to his clout.
