The Ministry of Steel has issued a press release on investments in production of specialty steel. This release was issued on 27th March, 2023.
The release states that since 2018 India is the world’s second largest crude steel producer. It is also the second largest consumer of finished steel since 2019.
On 22nd July, 2021, the Government approved the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for Specialty Steel. This scheme had a financial outlay of ₹ 6,322 crores.
The PLI Scheme aims to promote domestic manufacturing of ‘Specialty Steel’. The scheme attracts capital investment, generates employment and promotes technology up-gradation in the steel sector to achieve its goal.
Additionally, the salient features of the scheme include:
- 3 slabs of incentives,
- participation only by companies registered in India,
- commitment to thresholds of investment and
- incremental production given in the scheme guidelines.
Specialty Steel is a value-added steel where normal finished steel is coated, plated, subjected to heat treatment and so on. Moreover, applications that require specific properties such as defence, space, power, automobile, specialized capital goods etc. find particular use of this specialty steel.
Therefore, in order that the domestic steel sector moves up the global chain, additional production of specialty steel is a necessity.
Based on the PLI Scheme, the Government received 79 applications from 35 companies. It signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with 27 selected companies covering 57 applications. These Companies have made a commitment to invest ₹ 29,530 crores, establish a downstream capacity addition of 24.78 million tonne and generate employment to about 55,000.
