India’s steel imports have become more concentrated in past decade

Steel exports to India have become more concentrated

India’s steel imports have become more concentrated over the past decade, with countries like China and Vietnam bagging bigger share of the trade, a Moneycontrol analysis has found.

In 2024, 97 percent of India’s steel imports of hot-rolled steel, one of the top traded commodities, came from the top five countries compared with 80 percent a decade ago and 93 percent before the the coronavirus outbreak.

Vietnam, which didn’t export steel products to India before 2018, emerged among the country's top five importers in 2024. In 2021, Vietnam had just a 0.6 percent share of India’s imports, which grew to 10 percent in 2024.

Japan’s imports increased nearly four times between 2019 and 2024, while China’s have gone up 31 times to $615 million of $2.9 billion India imported in the previous year.

India’s imports of the commodity doubled during this period from $1.4 billion in 2019.

In the case of flat-rolled products of other alloy steel, the top five nations accounted for 86 percent of the trade compared with 77 percent a decade ago and 83 percent prior to the pandemic.

In the case of plated flat-rolled steel, Nepal and Vietnam both have become India’s top five exporters, with share of top five countries rising from 83 percent to 93 percent in 2024. Imports from Nepal rose 14-fold during the period.

Earlier this week, the government imposed a safeguard duty of 12 percent for 200 days on select steel products to protect the domestic industry from dumping after the US imposed a 25 percent tariff  on all steel and aluminium imports.

The measure would not apply to developing economies, except for China and Vietnam.

US’ earlier steel tariffs, along with a slowdown in Asia, were one of the significant reasons for a rise in steel exports to India.

“It appears that the decline in imports from Japan to the USA appears to be a significant cause of an increase in imports into India from Japan. Similarly, the decline in imports into the USA from China, Korea, Vietnam, also appears to have contributed to the increase in imports into India from such countries,” an investigation by Director General of Trade Remedies found.

The domestic manufacturers have claimed that more imports are expected to head to India, now that the US has imposed further tariffs.