New Delhi, Jan 30 (IBNS) India's leading business chamber ASSOCHAM Monday called for rationalisation of duty structure to provide a level-playing field for new-generation iron and steel making technologies like corex at par with conventional blast furnace technology.
Blast furnace gas and corex gas are by-products emerging in the process of manufacturing molten hot iron and are similar in composition, use and origin, said ASSOCHAM secretary general D.S. Rawat. Similarly LD and DRI gases are by-products of steel melt shop and DRI process.
The existing tariff description of coking coal should be substituted with metallurgical coal with zero per cent duty.
Metallurgical coal should be defined as coal used in manufacturing coke, iron and steel using technologies like blast furnace, corex, PCI in blast furnace or finex, said Rawat in communication to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Not only coals of lower parameters are charged duty, the users are forced to comply with lengthy and costly procedures for testing of technical parameters and provisional assessment, making imports costly and uneconomical, he said.
