India is on the verge of imposing antidumping duties on coke from China and Australia -- a move that will give domestic coke producers some reprieve amid surging coal prices, several sources said Monday.
The country's Directorate General of Antidumping, which is part of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, recommended late last week that a duty of $25/mt be imposed on imports from China and $16/mt on material from Australia.
Sources said that the finance ministry will make a decision on the issue in 10-20 days.
The application requesting imposition of antidumping tariffs on imports from these two countries was actually filed as far aback as December last year.
It was filed by the Indian Metallurgical Coke Manufacturers Association which include coke-makers Saurashtra Fuels Pvt. Ltd., Gujarat NRE Coke Ltd., Carbon Edge Industries Ltd., Bhatia Coke and Energy Ltd. and Basudha Udyog Pvt. Ltd. These companies account for more than half of India's coke output. Indian coke-makers said that the domestic industry had been incurring losses in the last few months on rising coking coal prices.
But market participants also said that the $25/mt duty on Chinese coke would make domestic material only marginally more competitive because the cost to manufacture 64% CSR coke was estimated at $330-350/mt CFR India.
"We need a $50/mt tax, rather than $25/mt [on Chinese coke] to be competitive," an Indian coke supplier said,
Platts assessed 64/62% CSR met coke from China at $288/mt CFR East India on Friday, up 138% since the start of the year.
India already imposes an import tax on Chinese coke. On April 1 last year, India hiked the tax on metallurgical coke from China to 5% from 2.5%.
Many steelmakers were, however, still likely to opt for cheaper Chinese coke because of reliable and consistent volumes and quality, according to a coke trader.
Chinese coke exporters shrugged off the likely imposition of an antidumping tax. It would have negligible impact on export prices, a major Chinese coke exporter said.
"Chinese domestic prices have the most say on export prices and there are many other countries like Japan and Brazil that have the appetite to buy more coke," a trader said.
China, the largest exporter of met coke, exported 6.58 million mt over January-September, down 3% year on year.
