Process Plant and Machinery Association of India (PPMAI), in a letter to the PM, has opposed excessive protectionism, including imposition of minimum import price (MIP) being given to the steel sector in the country, PPMAI said in a statement.
Process plant and machinery manufacturers include companies like Larsen & Toubro, Godrej, Thermax, Praj Industries and ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions and have strongly objected the perpetual protectionist environment being created excessively in favour of steel sector without consulting the capital goods and industry sector.
"However, government must understand that this goal is endangered if our industrial and trade policies are based on narrow perspectives of protectionism for one individual industry," said PPMAI Secretary V P Ramachandran.
In the letter, PPMAI said if steel industry, including stainless steel, is favoured with so much of excessive protectionism including curb on imports with anti dumping duties, additional safeguard duties and MIP, it will end up as a burden on the economy and scare away investors in other productive capital equipment as well as downstream MSME areas.
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"In a deregulated environment, government is taking away capital goods industries' right to access the required quality of raw materials and intermediates at competitive price," it said.
Questioning as to why steel sector alone is being taken care of and that too at the prospect of killing the downstream capital goods & MSME sector, it said the government's recent proposal to impose MIP for steel products without discussing with all stakeholders will further create confusion if arbitrary price is fixed, it added.
"If China, Korea and Japan are dumping at low price, start anti-dumping investigations instead of further protection through import curbs as Indian economy is not only steel sector alone," the letter said.