India has registered a 2.46 per cent rise in crude steel production to 26.363 million tonnes (MT) in the last quarter of 2017-18, as per official data.

The country had produced 25.729 MT during the January-March period of 2016-17, said the Joint Plant Committee (JPC).

In January 2018, India's crude steel output stood at 8.778 MT as against 8.811 MT during the same month a year ago. In the following month, the production was at 8.506 MT, compared to 8.154 MT in February 2017. During last month, the output stood at 9.079 MT, higher from 8.764 MT in the same month previous fiscal, according to JPC data.

Empowered by Ministry of Steel, Joint Plant Committee (JPC) is the only institution which collects data on the Indian iron and steel industry.

India has set a production target of 300 MT by the year 2030.

In this regard, the Cabinet last year approved the National Steel Policy (NSP) that aims to achieve steel making capacity of 300 MT by 2030 with an additional investment of Rs 10 lakh crore. It also approved a policy for providing preference to domestically manufactured iron and steel products in procurement by the government and its agencies.

India's production of hot metal during January-March 2017-18 grew by 3.27 per cent to 17.047 MT from 16.506 MT in the year-ago quarter.

The output of pig iron fell by 6 per cent to 2.498 MT during the last quarter from 2.661 MT in same period previous fiscal.

Pig iron is produced by smelting iron ore in blast furnaces or by smelting ilmenite in electric furnaces.

According to World Steel Organisation (worldsteel), India outstripped Asian industrial giant Japan to become the second largest steel producer as its steel output grew 3.43 per cent to 8.43 MT in February against 8.29 MT of the latter.

China is the biggest iron ore producer in the world.