Hindalco seeks Govt support to compete with foreign firms

The Dollar Business Bureau 

Hindalco, a leading aluminium company, on Friday sought the government’s support to make the local industry capable of competing with what it termed ‘foreign economic invasion’ and urged it to boost new investments.

“We seek government support to enable domestic industry to compete with the onslaught of foreign economic invasion. We urge the government to encourage new investments to make India self-sufficient to meet domestic demand and a significant player in the world market,” said Satish Pai, Managing Director of Hindalco, while addressing the World Non-Ferrous Conference 2016 in Mumbai.

The aluminium industry has considerable potential to grow, Satish said, but the sector seeks policy intervention from the government.

Cheap imports are impacting the growing local demand. In the past five years, shipments from the ASEAN nations, having FTAs with India, have surged to 31 percent from 6 percent of the overall refined imports. But what the government needs to understand is that India has sufficient reserves of copper, aluminium, and zinc to meet its own domestic demand he stressed.

Pai further said the country’s GDP is likely to grow at a minimum rate of 8 percent over the coming few years, expecting a high growth in the non-ferrous sector. With slowing growth in China, India would be a potential market for key metal producers who are struggling with sluggish demand and excess capacity

Earlier Balvinder Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Mines, when speaking to the media said, the government is analysing the surge of cheap imports of aluminium into the country and will decide on imposing minimum import price (MIP) on it in the next 15 days. The ministry is probing the issue in great depth and has held 2-3 meetings with stakeholders in the aluminium industry, he had added.

Satish Pai opined that the Indian industry needs to step up its R &D, invest in technological innovations in manufacturing and commercialise modern applications in order to compete with businesses outside the country.