An Overview of Indian Steel Industry and Its Impact on Construction Sector

Abstract

In the construction industry, steel is a prime and a rapidly growing sector in our country. India has leapfrogged its position from fourth to the second largest producer in steel sector outdistancing Japan and are using all the state-of-the-art technology for the production. Still the demand of steel tends to increase every year and helps in the overall economic growth in the long term. Industries like automobiles, consumer durables, infrastructure, production and so on are some of the major consumers of the steel sector, among which the construction and infrastructure industry has the maximum utilization of 63% from its total production. There has been observance of exponential increase in demand of steel sector since 1874, when the first steel production began for which new industrial policy is considered to be one of the important catalysts. In the present scenario, the government spends huge amount of funds for the steel and it predicts that the total production of steel is supposed to increase up to 300MT by the financial year 2030–2031 [1]. All the new projects initiated by the government like smart city and other infrastructures could benefit the escalating demand of steel sector in India. The usage of goods that are locally produced would indirectly help in increasing the national revenue and GDP. But there are a lot of problems like uncertainty in the supply of raw materials due to environmental issues and lack of metallurgy engineers. The government is promoting local production of steel by levying a heavy tax of 30% for export of the iron ore. Ministry of Steel (MOS) is also under the purview of establishing SRTMI (Steel Driven and Technology Mission of India), which is a pubic–private partnership and had been allotted Rs. 200 crores for the research and development purpose. It is affirmed that steel sector of China is currently the largest steel producer in recession, while the country’s steel sector is at a steady growth which would help India as a nation to take a bigger leap, and thus incorporating a sustainable growth in the future.

Reviewers Comment: This non-technical article is important for all civil engineers. This article well balances the economic growth with steel industry and thus adds another dimension to civil engineers to think beyond regular design and construction.