The Indian government should take measures to protect steelmakers against increasing subsidised imports from China, which are set to continue to pressure steel prices, according to Ravi Uppal, managing director and chief executive of Jindal Steel & Power (JSPL).

China-origin steel imports into India have increased 55% on-year in the eight months through November, surpassing the tonnage of the last full fiscal year (ending 31 March 2014) and pressuring local steel prices. “There is no level playing field when it comes to competing with Chinese players,” Uppal says in a CNBC-TV18 interview monitored by Kallanish. “If the Chinese are giving 13-16% of incentive or subsidy, we must have some kind of duty protection against that.”

Coupled with the imports is the fact Indian steel demand hasn’t risen this year as much as was expected. Demand rose 1% (or by 0.4 million tonnes) year-on-year in the eight months through November. Uppal sees “green shoots” of economic recovery from the first fiscal quarter next year, beginning in April.

“The government has initiated a lot of infrastructure projects; they are also trying to see that the infrastructure projects, which were stuck for some reasons, also get moving. I think a positive result in demand will be seen from the first quarter of next year,” he observes.

Speaking about the reason for JSPL’s recent issuing of non-convertible debentures (NCD) to raise funding, Uppal says: “As the business is growing for us and we also have some projects, which are in the pipeline, we are close to completion, so we had some kind of needs and one way to meet [them] for us was to go through the NCD route.”

The upcoming coal mine e-auctions, meanwhile, will change the landscape for coal production in India. “I think we have so far got so used to living in a regime of shortages of coal that we are not able to envisage a situation where we will have surplus coal. I do feel that in [1-2 years] we are going to have plenty of coal and there won’t be so much of a clamour to get coal as we experience today,” Uppal concludes.