India vs China: Comparative Analysis in Steel Industry

Neeraj Kochhar CBI News

Introduction

India was the second-largest steel exporting and producing country in the world before the terrible pandemic hit us. India and the whole world were recently overtaken by the overwhelming production of steel from China owing to a lot of factors, some of the most important of which we will be discussing below. We shall explore the factors that make India and China always on edge specifically in this respect along with countless others. Despite having a natural advantage on our side, that is the abundance of iron ore in the territory, India seems to lag behind China and we shall discover why that is so in this article. Know more about Neeraj Kochhar Latest News

Statistics

In 2018 and 2019, the Indian government was more than happy to announce to the domestic media that India was ranked as the world’s second-largest producer of steel by the world steel association. Then came the pandemic that forced all the steel facilities in India to resort to functioning at a sub-optimal capacity.

 

The Indian Steel Ministry published a report stating during the peak of the Covid period that stated that the domestic demand for steel had drastically fallen down by 63%, amounting to merely 9.10 million tonnes.

Migrant Laborers 

First and foremost, the problem of migrant laborers, no matter how trivial it seemed to the common public initially, it had serious repercussion on the Indian economy and not many realize it, stated the Neeraj Raja Kochhar news. When the migrant laborers were on the move, they had to leave behind their livelihood, and that stalled almost all the important manufacturing processes of all the industries, construction projects, sites, warehouses, and whatnot. All of this, as a result, had such a great impact, so much so that the entire supply chain of the steel industry got stalled and affected.

 

China, on the other hand, was lucky enough to not just turn the whole situation into its favor but also to emerge as the world’s largest stakeholder in the global steel market, making it accountable for approximately, 57-60% of the total global steel market.

Export of Steel

China benefits highly from exporting steel as currently, there is no nation that can compete with the highly attractive prices of steel that China offers to the world. Indian steel producers on the other hand benefit more from the domestic market rather than the global market because in the domestic market they do not have to deal with anti-dumping duties and import-parity. There’s another important aspect to this, as pointed out by Neeraj Kochhar Viraj Group- that as India operated at below 50% capacity, China captured the global market more and more, leaving India’s global foothold in the market weak.

Conclusion

As China’s steel production continues to grow, the rest of the world is seeing a de-growth in their domestic sectors. This has given a crucial benefit to China to create a global monopoly. It seems to us that China grew at the cost of India. This situation might best be explained as facing damage without injury. The immediate plan of action is to enable India’s domestic market to regain its equilibrium to the pre-covid levels and to swiftly implement the robust policies of the Indian government. It will take time for the Indian market to recover but it is indeed possible. Check Neeraj Kochhar CBI News

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