September 13, 2018 - India's steel minister said on Thursday he wanted the finance ministry to scrap the 2.5% duty on imports of coking coal, a key steelmaking raw material, to limit input costs.

"We are pursuing a cut," Chaudhary Birender Singh told reporters. "We want to make it zero. It cannot be 2.5% to 2%."

India's coking coal imports rose 13% in the 2017/18 fiscal year that ended in March.