NEW DELHI: India’s steel sector crossed a milestone in 2024 with 149.4 million tonnes of crude steel produced, India confirmed its position as the world’s second largest steel producer behind only China and well ahead of Japan and the United States. Production has grown at a compound annual rate of roughly 7.5% since 2018 when output stood at around 109 million tonnes. The infrastructure push rising automotive demand and government capex have all driven that growth.
The Scale of the Boom
| Year | World Crude Steel Production(Mt) | India Crude Steel Production(Mt) |
| 2017 | 1739 | 102 |
| 2018 | 1831 | 109 |
| 2019 | 1880 | 111 |
| 2020 | 1885 | 100 |
| 2021 | 1963 | 118 |
| 2022 | 1890 | 125 |
| 2023 | 1892 | 141 |
Source: World Steel Association, Mt=million tonnes
India’s per capita steel consumption stands at approximately 120 to 125 kg per annum against a global average of 230 to 240 kg meaning there is significant headroom for domestic consumption to grow as urbanisation and infrastructure investment deepen.
The PLI scheme for specialty steel has added further momentum. Under the scheme notified in 2023 and updated in 2025, participating companies have committed total investments of approximately ₹2.15 lakh crore. Actual capital deployed so far stands at around ₹1.15 lakh crore with early-phase production of roughly 1 to 1.5 million tonnes of specialty steel already underway. The Ministry of Steel projects around 600,000 direct and indirect jobs from PLI-linked projects over the full scheme period.
The National Steel Policy 2017 set a target of 300 million tonnes of crude steel capacity by 2030-31. At current output levels India is roughly halfway there with announced capacity addition pipelines indicating the trajectory remains on track.
The China Problem
Chinese steel imports into India jumped 80% year on year between January and July 2024 hitting 1.61 million tonnes in that period alone. India turned a net importer of finished steel in FY2023-24 and remained so in FY2024-25 the second consecutive year of net imports a striking position for the world’s second largest producer to find itself in. China’s domestic steel demand has slowed as its property sector contracts. With excess capacity running at scale chinese mills have been exporting aggressively at prices Indian producers find difficult to match. Chinese-origin steel has been undercutting Indian prices across core categories including steel bars, wires, galvanised iron sheets and coated coils.
The DGTR investigation into cold-rolled non-oriented electrical steel confirmed the scale of the problem. The Director General found that imports were being sold below normal value and had caused material injury to Indian producers including reduced profitability, lower capacity utilisation and sustained pressure on domestic prices. A five-year anti-dumping duty ranging from approximately 223 to 415 per tonne was subsequently notified.
The government finalised a broader three-year safeguard duty on December 30, 2025 building on a provisional 12% duty imposed in April 2025. That duty remains in force and is scheduled to run until end-2028.
The Small Furnace Story
India’s large integrated producers Tata Steel at around 21.5 million tonnes of group production, JSW Steel at approximately 20.8 to 21 million tonnes and SAIL at roughly 17.5 to 18 million tonnes have the scale and balance sheet depth to absorb margin pressure. India’s thousands of small induction furnace operators, clustered in Mandi Gobindgarh in Punjab, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Jalna in Maharashtra, do not.
Small steel mills across India had begun planning job cuts before the April 2025 safeguard duty was imposed. “We have put the decision to cut jobs on hold and will see how demand fares,” said Adarsh Garg, chairman of Punjab’s Jogindra Group. “The industry was in losses and this duty might bring relief.”
In Pune, operators reported that order flows began recovering within hours of the duty announcement. Small mill operators have described Chinese-origin HR and CR steel compressing their margins by ₹2,000 to ₹3,000 per tonne. The government assured MSMEs that large steelmakers would supply them steel at FOB export prices approximately 20% below market rates. Implementation of that arrangement has been uneven, with some operators reporting inconsistent availability from large producers.
What Comes Next
The Ministry of Steel’s green steel roadmap requires all new plants commissioned after 2025 to use at least 30% domestic coking coal, with a broader target of reducing carbon intensity by 30 to 40% by 2030. That transition will require significant capital and is only just beginning.
India’s steel demand is projected to continue growing through 2025 and 2026 driven by infrastructure, housing and automotive sectors.
But the boom that India’s steel sector is experiencing is not reaching every part of the industry equally. The safeguard duty has bought time for small operators what they need alongside it is consistent implementation of the MSME supply assurance, faster anti-dumping enforcement and a domestic demand pipeline that translates government infrastructure announcements into actual orders at the mill level.
The headline number 149.4 million tonnes tells a genuine story of industrial growth. The fuller story is being written in the smaller furnaces of Mandi Gobindgarh and Raipur, where that growth has not yet arrived.
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