By Neha Arora
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India is trying to ensure steady supplies of coking coal for domestic steel companies including from Moscow, the top civil servant at the Ministry of Steel Sanjay Kumar Singh told Reuters on Monday, amid a surge in global prices.
Indian steel companies are reeling from the impact of high global prices of coking coal, used in steelmaking, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Australia, India’s top supplier of coking coal, raised prices to $700 per tonne from $200 per tonne earlier this year, Singh said.
“Pricing has been a challenge,” Singh told Reuters, adding “whatever sourcing is available, we are definitely trying.”
India meets around 85% of its overall coking coal needs from imports totalling 50-55 million tonne every year. The government aims to bring down its import dependence to 65% by 2030/31.
Indian companies are aiming to reduce their dependence on Australia through Russian imports, but supplies have been affected, steel minister Ramchandra Prasad Singh had told a conference in New Delhi on Sunday.
The Indian government is trying to secure supplies from Moscow, Singh said, adding that the mechanism, including modes of payments, are yet to be settled.
“Russia is definitely one of the important sources,” Singh said.
“In this kind of scenario, it is a country to country arrangement. Individually, companies are also in touch,” he said.
India, a major buyer of Russian goods from commodities to weapons, has not placed any bans on imports unlike the West which has imposed sweeping economic sanctions.
(Reporting by Neha Arora; Editing by Mayank Bhardwaj and Ed Osmond)
