REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Indonesian steel makers have asked for protection from the government against the impact of large imports of steel products.

"Flooding imports are threatening the survival of domestic industry we have developed in years with great difficulties," managing director of PT Ispat Indo, Baldeo Prasad Banka said here on Monday.

Despite an increase in import duty, there are still large imports by naughty importers, who changed the tariff categories to evade high import duty, Baldeo said.

Domestic producers are facing the condition of marketing problem that they have to operate much below their capacity, he said.

"In fact we have been forced to close a production lines and laid off 500 workers as a result of the flooding imports," he said.

Ispa Indo is the country's largest producer of wire rod with a market share of 60 percent, but when the market share was cut by 15 percentage point the company would be in serious problem, he said.

The country's steel industry also faced similar problem last year with large import of light steel products , which are products of alloyed iron such as carbon steel.

The imports of products of alloyed steel have been granted import duty facility by the government but the facility has been misused by importers by importing alloyed steel below standard, he said, adding some of the imported steel products are entirely without other contents.

With the import duty facility, importers, could put up lower prices for their products making local products in competitive in price.

Earlier, the government succeeded in tightening imports of alloyed steel products by slapping import duty on ones not up to the Indonesian National Standard (SNI).

The policy ran effectively, but not long as this year imports came again in floods, said Ketut Setiawan, the chief spokesman of PT Gunung Garuda, another major steel maker in the country.

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