Indian scrap loading regulation delayed until May 1

The Mumbai-based Metal Recycling Association of India (MRAI) has negotiated a delay in the implementation of a regulation in India that requires overseas scrap shippers to record videos of their container loading process. According to an Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) e-mail to its members, the proposed regulation has been delayed until May 1, 2015.

“The MRAI, who had just left an 11-hour meeting with India's Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), [says] the DGFT has postponed the effective date for the new rules until May 1, 2015,” ISRI wrote to its members in an April 9 e-mail.

“ISRI, along with others, sent letters to the highest levels of Indian government, including Prime Minister Modi, urging them to reconsider some of the requirements that were added to the new PSI (pre-shipment Inspection) rules,” says ISRI. “It is our understanding the meeting was very productive and another meeting has been scheduled for April 30th, at which point it is hoped that most of the onerous requirements in the new rule will be eliminated. We also understand that the operative date for whether a shipment is controlled by the existing or new PSI Rules will be the bill of lading date.”

MRAI Secretary General Amar Singh, in an April 7, 2015, memo to member companies, said the association met with officials from the DGFT on that day also to explain “the difficulties faced by exporters, importers & PSICs (Pre-Shipment Inspection Certificate inspectors ) of implementing the new procedures.” Singh says the MRAI “conveyed [to the DGFT] that it is not practical to submit video recordings, etc.”

In its new 209-page “Handbook of Procedures“ document, which was posted to the DGFT website April 1, 2015, text in Sections 2.54 through 2.56 states that the Pre-Shipment Inspection Agency (PSIA) “will make a video clip of 3-to-5 minutes of the inspection carried out in mp3/mp4/flv/wav format, duly capturing the following activities/details:

• the time, date, place of the inspection;
• photographs of the exporter and representative of the importer (if available);
• the name and identity number of inspector;
• instrument number;
• the container number;
• the event of stuffing of container and sealing of the same;
• the carriage and its registration number on which the container is loaded; and
• the process of signing of the PSIA certificate by the authorized person.”

Forms of scrap listed by the DGFT as covered by the new procedure include iron and steel, copper and brass, nickel, aluminum, zinc, tin and magnesium scrap.

ISRI, in an earlier memorandum to its members, said the regulation is “likely to cause substantial challenges for shipments already on their way to India, as well as for future shipments.”