Industrial organisations stage protest against huge hike in steel prices

Ludhiana, March 5, 2022: Today a protest was organized by Industrial Organizations At cycle market in Ludhiana against huge hike in steel prices. The protest was jointly organized by All Industries and Trade Organizations.
The effigies of Steel Minister of India and Chairman of Steel Authority of India Limited and Chairman of Vishakhapatnam Steel Plant were burnet under protest. 

Addressing the protesors, Badish Jindal, National President, All Industries & Trade Forum and Narinder Bhamra, President, Fasteners Manufacturers Association of India said that the public steel plants and private main steel plants increased the prices of steel by around Rs 10000 per ton in last one month. Following the large produces the secondary steel plants of Punjab also increased the prices of ingot from 47000 to 61000 per ton (14000) during last one month. 

Due to this the steel consuming industries of Ludhiana faced losses of 3000 crores just in last one month as they have to supply their pending export and domestic orders. If it continued the Industries will be forced to shut down due to huge increase in steel prices.

“If we calculate the losses of Punjab these are more than 5000 crores and Indian consumers suffered losses of more than 50000 crores in a month and these few steel produces earned on the cost of small consumers”, they said.

They said in the last one year the prices of steel has increased to around 25000 Rs per ton. The main reason behind the increase is cartel of Indian steel companies formed under the name of Indian Steel Alliance. Shockingly the government steel companies are also the part of this cartel. 

The government of India and steel ministry is silent on the issues due to their vested interests, they added. 

Further, they said the local steel furnaces and rolling mills are working under SMS cartel and keep on changing the prices in every hour. Whenever they have to procure the scrap they reduce the prices on SMS and after procuring the scrap from market they increase the prices of steel. 

They blamed the government that when Indian companies have their own steel plants then why they are allowed to manipulate the prices. 

“Now the steel companies & government is making excuses of war of Russia & Ukraine whereas it’s a known fact that we don’t have any steel trading with both the economies. So this is just a black marketing of steel by steel producers”, they said. 

Adding, they said the margins of the Industry are not above 5% so under such circumstances so under such circumstances it is hard to absorb the increase of 25% by Industries. So the industries will have to close down their productions. 

These price manipulations are throwing Indian MSMEs out of export competitions and the industries also failed to fulfill the long term contracts of supplies. 

“So it was decided that if the plants won’t decrease the prices in 7 days the industrial organizations will start chain of hunger strikes and the industries will stop procurement of steel”, they warned. 

Raj Kumar Singla, Naveen Gupta, Pankaj Aggarwal, Rajesh Soni, Karan Lamba, Rachpal Bhambra, Deepinder Bhamra, Atul Sethi, Naveen Gupta, Karamjit Singh , Hardeep Singh, Harvinder Sohal, Munish Sachdeva, Ajay Aggarwal, Sachin Gupta, Raja King, Gurjit Singh, Jiwan Singla, Iqbal Kathuria, Sarabjit Singh, Manish Singla, Avtar Kathuria and Rajesh Gupta were among those present.