Government must gradually reduce iron ore exports to ensure that adequate quantity of this mineral is available for domestic requirement, a Parliamentary standing committee said.
In its report, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Coal and Steel suggested raising the export duty on iron ore beyond the existing 30 per cent. The report was tabled in Lok Sabha recently.
In order to ensure sufficient availability of ore to steel firms, the government may even consider total banning of export, the report says.
Earlier, the government raised export duty on iron ore in order to discourage shipment of the scarce raw material.
Following this, export of ore declined to 18.37 million tonne (mn t) in 2012-13 from 61.74 mn t in 2011-12.
But a part of the fall in ore export is attributed to the ban on mining in Karnataka and Goa.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.