Till the last month, both price and demand curves were heading north and the iron and steel industry was very happily sailing ahead. Suddenly winds changed their direction. Black clouds started gathering and the whole industry sentiment changed. What really happened ? Why this unexpected dive ? Lets analyse. It is a well-known theory that a rising price curve will not interfere in the demand curve up to a certain level but after that demand curve is not able to carry the price weight on its shoulders and still climb up. It starts falling. I do agree that the rising raw material prices have p ..read more

In the last two decades or so, due to faster, seamless and smooth communication, the world has surely come closer. Thanks to internet and its various tools, we can know about almost everything about almost anywhere on this planet and even beyond. Great feeling ! Obviously this has translated in the business environment too and today international trade is not as difficult as it was in the last century. Of course, there are other challenges like quality, price etc. thus keeping the trade extremely competitive. The supply chain of most of the mega corporate is spread over not countries but vari ..read more

As mentioned in my last piece, the steel demand lies outside the steel industry and hence if the government spends and pushes the steel user sectors such as infra, construction, auto etc., it will automatically boost the steel demand in the country. There may be very little direct benefit to iron & steel industry in the recently announced union finance budget for the fiscal 2022-23, but the fact that it has a bigger outlay for infrastructure than the last year, emphasis on domestic purchases of defence equipment will surely benefit our industry. Further, thrust on MSME sector coupled with ..read more

The union finance budget is just round the corner and newspapers have already started publishing the expert views and also the expectations from different industries and groups. What does steel industry want from the government ? What are its expectations from this budget ? As we all know, the steel demand lies outside the steel industry and we have to depend on other customer industry sectors such as infra, construction, auto, engineering, consumer durables etc. for the steel consumption. Out of this infrastructure itself consumes more than 70 % of steel in the country and obviously it is the ..read more

It is said that if one wants to predict the future, he will have to first study the past. How was the past one year for the economy and specifically for the steel sector ? Can we draw some conclusions and make some guesstimates about the present fiscal by analysing past year’s performance by iron & steel sector ? Let’s see ! In July 2020, the covid pandemic was creating havoc all over the world and also in India. The steel industry, which was almost shut during the previous quarter, was slowly trying to wake up. As such the steel demand in construction sector was never fully bottomed and i ..read more

Rising demand and strong prices ! What else should the Indian iron & steel sector ask for ? Indeed last few months presented more than one surprises for Indian steel industry. The demand started rising somewhere during July-August, the prices started firming around the same period and now in the month of March 2021, the sentiment in the industry seems completely positive. So much so that the government had to lower the import duty on finished steel and also on the scrap and ore in order to put some pressure on prices. These proposals in the recently tabled union budget rightly aimed at gi ..read more

The steel demand in the country seems to be increasing steadily thanks to the user sectors like infra, construction and auto. The first sign of recovery was visible in September when auto sales showed sizable improvement. Many thought it was accumulated demand as there was almost nil sale during the first few months of lockdown. When the positive trend continued in subsequent months, still it was stamped as festive spike. Now that this upward trend is still continuing, experts are believing it to be a sustainable growth. Lets hope this continues and 2021 be a better year for iron & steel ..read more

I am quite happy about the way Indian iron & steel industry is recovering from the global pandemic of covid-19. As we all know, ‘steel’ is one of the core sector of the economy and is important input to many important industry sectors like infra, construction, white goods, auto, engineering, etc. Thus the performance of steel sector affects so many industry verticals and finally has a big impact on overall economy of the country. In the first few months of unlocking, the steel production was superseding the demand. This was natural as the steel producers were running the plants where as t ..read more

posted on October 30 , 2020 The world is slowly coming out of Covid fear. Finally the livelihood proved more important than life and thus professional activities have been re-started and are gearing up all over the world. Mind well, the corona pandemic has not subsided nor we have found the vaccacine but still the industry has gradually started operating. Infact in many places, there has been surge in cases but fortunately the death rate has come down and recovery rate has improved substantially. Iron & steel industry too has been improving on it’s production figures and by now it has ach ..read more