India’s steel minister wants import duty on coking coal scrapped

NEW DELHI, Sept 13 (Reuters) – India’s steel minister said on Thursday he wanted the finance ministry to scrap the 2.5 percent duty on imports of coking coal, a key steelmaking raw material, to limit input costs.

“We are pursuing a cut,” Chaudhary Birender Singh told reporters. “We want to make it zero. It cannot be 2.5 percent to 2 percent.”

India’s coking coal imports rose 13 percent in the 2017/18 fiscal year that ended in March.

(Reporting by Neha Dasgupta; Editing by Malini Menon)