Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma today said he had written to the Finance Ministry urging to hike export duty on iron ore to 30% from the current 20%.
"We want higher duty on export of iron ore and last week, I wrote to finance ministry to increase the duty to 30% for both iron ore fines and lumps," Verma told reporters here.
Stating that the Steel Ministry was not in favour of any export of iron ore, he said the move would ensure that there is no shortage of the raw material for the domestic steel units.
The government in the Budget had hiked duty on iron ore, both fines and lumps, to 20% in order to discourage exports and encourage value addition.
The hike was not appreciated by the iron ore industry, which had dubbed it as the "death knell" for it, on which relies the livelihood of over a million people.
After the duty hike, exports of iron ore has declined by about 22% to 25.2 million tonne in April-July to the corresponding period last fiscal.
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The Federation of the Indian Mineral Industries expects iron ore exports to fall by over 20% to 75 million tonne in the current fiscal from 98 million tonne in 2010-11.
Meanwhile, Steel Secretary PK Misra said the New Steel Policy would come out by the end of the year.
"The need for this arose as the last policy's time-frame was till 2010 only. So we felt that this is the time to review the policy and come out with the realistic estimates," he said adding that four sub-groups have already been constituted.
"They will submit their reports by October 15. Then we will have a couple of meetings to finalise it," Mishra added.