The PMO, sources added, has sought further clarity on the matter and as of now the proposal has been sent back to the drawing board, though steel ministry officials claimed the matter is very much alive and that th-ere could be positive movement on it..That the move to impose MIP had been postponed was clear when commerce wholesale metric nut minister Nirmala Sithar-aman said on January 8 that the government will not rush into fixing a MIP for certain steel products.

The steel and commerce ministries in the past one month had held hectic deliberations on imposition of MIP on cheap steel shipments from China, which owing to their lesser price have been hitting the Indian steel market hard for the past few years as there are few takers for domestic steel. But at this stage we are not rushing into it,” she had told reporters.

We have done a fairly good amount of groundwork on it, but it’s not just one item, one HS code, which is affected,” she had told reporters.Though both the steel and commerce ministries had discussed the plan to impose a minimum import price (MIP) on certain categories of steel with the finance ministry, sources told this newspaper that t Though both the steel and commerce ministries had discussed the plan to impose a minimum import price (MIP) on certain categories of steel with the finance ministry, sources told this newspaper that the PMO shot down the proposal, apparently reminding the departments that with India being a WTO member any changes in pricing of a global commodity would have to be indicated to the global trade body.There are several of them which will be impacted and therefore any talk of MIP will not have to be restricted to one or two lines (products) but may be several. Apart from this, there were also fears within the government that imposition of MIP, though beneficial to the domestic industry, may also lead to black-marketing of steel, sources added