The central government has approved the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for speciality steel. The time period of the scheme is five years, from 2023-24 to 2027-28. The scheme is anticipated to get an investment of around Rs 40,000 crores and capacity addition of 25 million tonne (mt) for speciality steel, with a budgetary outlay of Rs 6,322 crore. The scheme would provide employment to around 5,25,000 people, of which 68,000 will be employed directly.

Speciality steel was picked as the target segment because only 18 mt of value-added steel/speciality steel were produced out of 102 mt of steel in India in 2020-21 in the country.

Besides this, approximately 4 mt import was of speciality steel alone out of 6.7 mt of imports in the same year, resulting in the forex expenditure of around Rs 30,000 crore.

India will go up in the steel value chain by becoming Atma Nirbhar in producing speciality steel and reach an equilibrium with advanced steelmaking countries like Korea and Japan.

It is predicted that by the end of 2026-27, the speciality steel production is going to become 42 mt. It will make sure that speciality steel worth around Rs 2.5 lakh crores will be produced and consumed in the country that otherwise would have been imported.

In the same way, the speciality steel export is going to become approximately 5.5 mt, unlike the current 1.7 mt of speciality steel getting forex of Rs 33,000 crore.

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