Achievements of ASMA since its inception in 2016
- ASMA managed to avert imposition of safeguard duty on primary metal after prolonged struggle.
- Averted imposition of enhanced duty despite heavy pressure in the 4 meetings chaired by Sh. Piyush Goyal, Minister of commerce & industry.
- For MIP, Primary Producers moved to the Ministry of Mines but again strongly protested by ASMA and the move was averted.
- Strongly opposed the move of Primary producers for imposition of quantitative restrictions on import of scrap through Ministry of Commerce, provided various documents with facts & figures and were able to avert the move.
- Primary producers again took up the matter through PMO for increase in the duty for import of primary metal and scrap but again with strong representations and meeting with Principal Secretary to the PM, this move was also averted.
- To restrict the import of scrap in the country, primary producers again formulated stringent standards for the aluminium scrap through JNARDDC (Jawahar Lal Nehru Aluminium Research Design and Development Centre) and BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) , which was also countered in meeting at Mumbai and Nagpur with various facts, figures and documents and the move have been dropped.
- ASMA was successful in sending a strong message to primary producers by convincing its members not to participate in INCAL 2019 organised by AAI who has always been ignoring the interests of secondary aluminium producers & favouring the primary industry by influencing govt. policies with fabricated data.
- ASMA managed to get the notification issued by concerned government department to stop the import of solar panels from China which resulted in holding up of their containers of solar panel at various Indian ports.
- Not satisfied with all the above measures primary producers approached Niti Ayog and ASMA’s strong PP presentation, which lasted for 2 hours, got them convinced to our facts and figures and dropped their proposal for increase in duty on primary aluminium.
- ASMA was called by the Hon’ble Minister of Commerce and Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal for discussion and providing information about inclusion and exclusion of aluminium products, HS Code wise, to be considered for the RCEP meeting at Bangkok somewhere in July’2019. Our suggestions to include wrought products of aluminium & exclude raw material inputs like ingots & scrap contrary to the suggestions otherwise by AAI, helped the ministry to take tough stand on joining this free trade block.
- Ministry of mines has constituted core committee for preparing a comprehensive capacity building proposal on aluminium sector. Our association is one of the members of this core committee and with other Government departments. They are in the process of compiling training Module on recycling and waste management of aluminium.
- We have foiled an attempt by primary producers in association with Aluminium Association of India to get the import duty increased on both the raw aluminium ingots and scrap and also restrict the import of scrap by giving pre budget recommendations to Ministry of Finance. We could achieve this by strong representation to Ministry of mines, finance & MSME with copies to PMO and by bringing an appeal on behalf of whole secondary industry in the form of an advertisement in leading finance newspapers like Economic Times, Business Standard etc.
- In view of the stress of the present govt. on Make in India & forming Atam Nirbhar Bharat, GOI ministries & various departments are in touch with ASMA for providing data in the field of aluminium products so that their imports can be curbed from China & other ASEAN countries with whom our government is planning to renegotiate the existing FTAs. ASMA is on constant vigil along with other associations in the field of aluminium to defeat the nefarious activities of AAI who is on the forefront to finish the secondary aluminium industry in collaboration with the primary aluminium producers of this country.
- ASMA has formed Standardization Cell on the basis of guidelines issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) in the month of September, 2020. It has representatives from the extrusions, alloy ingots, flat rolled products (FRP), cables and conductor manufacturers and they will be representing our association in various committees formed by BIS for making new standards and amending the existing one, keeping in view the international developments.