India Is World’s Second Largest Steel Producer
In FY2022, India had produced 133.596 MT of crude steel. With this, at present India has become the second largest crude steel producing country in the world.
In the year 2018, India had overtaken Japan in terms of production of crude steel. China is still the global leader in the production of crude steel.
Steel:
- Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. It contains less than 2% carbon, 1% manganese and small amounts of silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and oxygen.
- Iron is obtained by removing oxygen and other impurities from iron ore.
- Steel is the world’s most important engineering and construction material.
- It is used in almost every aspect of our lives. This includes cars, building materials, refrigerators, washing machines, cargo ships, surgical instruments, etc.
Initiatives taken for steel industry:
- Steel Scrap Recycling Policy has been implemented to promote scientific processing and recycling of ferrous scrap.
- The National Steel Policy, 2017 has set a target of achieving total crude steel capacity of 300 MTPA and total demand/production capacity of crude steel at 255 MTPA by 2030-31.
- Policy (DMI&SP Policy) has been formulated to give preference to domestically manufactured iron and steel products.
- A production linked incentive scheme was approved for the production of special steel in the year 2021.
The main types of iron ore are hematite, magnetite, limonite and siderite (FeCO3).
- Major active mines: Bailadila Nuagaon, Gandhamardan, Jora, Balda, Narayan Poshi, Daitari and Barsua mines.
- In the year 2021, India exports iron ore worth $4.3 billion. Due to this, it had become the 7th largest exporter of iron ore. Also, India imported iron ore worth $177 million. This made it the 41st largest importer of iron ore in the world.
- 92% of India’s total iron ore exports were low grade ores.
Source – PIB
