Will the new steel policy benefit manufacturers?

Steel player's prospects remain strong helped by firm realisations and lower imports

The government's National Steel Policy aims to grow India's steel production by almost 2.5 times from current levels till 2030. The policy also attempts at providing impetus to domestic steel demand by ensuring use of domestic steel for government infrastructure projects.

The street is gauging the benefits that will accrue on demand and production growth.

On demand side, imports have already been curbed to a large extent by protectionist measures as minimum import pricing (MIP) and other duties (ant-dumping, safeguard, etc) were imposed by government starting February 2016. The imports currently stand at about 8-9 per cent of steel demand