India in Global Crude Steel Production

Since independence, the Indian government has concentrated on promoting the development of different industries in the country and the steel industry has always remained in the priority list.

[br]The Indian steel industry enjoys a significant position in the global arena and the importance of India in global crude steel production has grown significantly over the years.

The efforts to develop the steel industry in India started during the first five year plan but the real developments started happening from 1980s onwards. The development of the sector can be traced from the fact that although the Indian steel industry increased its production, but in the 90s India imported huge quantity of steels to meet the growing demand of steel in the country.

This scenario was totally changed in 2004 when India stood at the ninth position in terms of crude steel production in the whole world and in 2006, India was at the seventh place among the crude steel producing companies.

According to the released data by the International Iron and Steel Institute, contribution of India in global crude steel production was about 40.9 million tonnes in 2005. This quantity was increased by 7.6% in 2006 and the country produced nearly 44 million tonnes of steel.

[br]This development of the industry was further speeded up in 2007 and the total production of crude steel was nearly 50 million tonnes. This growth in the production has also helped the country to gain the fifth position among global crude steel producing countries.

There are different factors that are responsible for this development. Firstly, the Indian government has taken some reformatory steps that have helped the Indian steel industry to grow at a good pace. The Indian government has set a target to increase the crude steel production and till 2019-20, the Indian steel industry is expected to produce nearly 110 million tonnes of crude steel.

Another important reason of this development is the deregulation factor. The national as well as state governments in India are playing the role of a facilitator. At the same time, the national policies regarding the steel industry are also reformed and this has encouraged investments in the industry.