Indian steel production drops 4% to 8.99 million tonnes in January

India's crude steel production fell 3.84 percent in January 2019 to 8.995 million tonnes, according to the Ministry of Steel (JPC). The drop is reported after the World Steel Association (worldsteel) recently announced that India had replaced Japan as the second largest steel producing country in the world.

On January 25, worldsteel noted in its report that India's crude steel production in 2018 was 106.5 million tonnes, while Japan's produced 104.3 million tonnes in 2018.

“Steel production in January 2019 was 8.995 million tonnes, down 3.8 percent from January 2018, and down 0.2 percent from December 2018,” the JPC said in a report.

In the same month a year ago, the country produced 9.355 million tons of steel.

State-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL), along with private players JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) and Essar Steel, produced 5.486 million tonnes of metal in January. ,

The rest came from other manufacturers, the report said.

In January 2019, hot metal production was 6.194 million tonnes, up 3.3 percent from 5.999 million tonnes in the same month last year.

Pig iron production in the country fell 3 percent to 0.526 million tons in January this year, compared with 0.542 million tons in the same period last year.

India has set a target to produce 300 million tons of crude steel by 2030 with an investment of Rs. 10 million. The national steel policy has already been approved by the Cabinet of Ministers.

The JPC Ministry of Steel is the only institution in India that collects and maintains data on the domestic steel sector.