Secondary aluminium industry players urge govt to remove duty on aluminium scrap import
After seeing the dark protectionism clouds arising from US Trade war, India manufacturing industries are facing several challenges in Industrial Goods and services particularly steel and aluminium sector.
Secondary aluminium industry body Material Recycling Association of India (MRAI) today urged the government to remove the basic customs duty on import of aluminium scarp from 2.5 per cent at present.
While the primary aluminium associtino, The Aluminium Association of India (AAI) wants the duty to be raised to 10 per cent, a move which will take away jobs of thousands of people working in the downstream and ancillary industry, MRAI said in a statement.
“We are surprised to see that even after knowing this, a delegation of the (Aluminium) association met Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Ramesh Abhishek recently and requested to increase the duty to 10 per cent,” MRAI President Sanjay Mehta said in the statement.
Such protective measures would restrict the availability of recycled aluminium for more than 5000 units in the country, which needs to be encouraged for leveraging the consumption opportunities of aluminium.
MRAI firmly believes in encouraging empowerment and keeping ecological balance for a sustainable future to create more employment opportunities to lakhs of potential people.
AAI does not represents the entire stake holders of the aluminium industry in the country, he said, adding that it only represents the primary producers of the sector and “more than 50 per cent stake holders are in the secondary aluminium recycling sectors are closely associated with MRAI.
The increase of duty will have an adverse affect on the small and medium players of the sector who make products such as alloys by recycling as it will shoot up their input cost, Dr Kishore Rajpurohit, Executive Committe Member, MRAI, said.
“Hence, we request the government that to save the small and medium players instead of raising the duty it should abolish it and bring it down to zero,” he said.
The association further said that Primary aluminium is used in electrical, foils, powder, extrusion etc, whereas the aluminium scrap is mainly used in alloy ingots, castings which are further used in the automobiles industry and Deox which are used in steel plant for deoxidation.
“Primary producers fix the price of their product by adding the customs duty also to their basic value. Their only intention for increase of Custom Duty is to get more price from the Indian downstream industry. Also, they are trying to create monopoly in country by restricting the imports of aluminium scrap by increasing the customs duty, Mehta added.
For any further details, please contact me….
Pramod Shinde
MRAI
Mobile : 9930629739
