NEW DELHI: Stainless steel makers on Wednesday said they will approach the Commerce Ministry for imposition of anti-dumping duty on certain grades of the alloy from China to protect the domestic mills from cheap imports.

"Of late, the imports have surged to 6,000 tonnes a month from China which earlier used to be somewhere around 1,000 tonnes. The government must slap anti-dumping duty on such imports," Indian Stainless Steel Development Association President N C Mathur said.

He said the industry body was in process of filing the anti-dumping application with the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties in the Commerce Ministry.

"We are collecting information and file the complaint with in a month," Mathur said.

China has created surplus capacity of stainless steel and is dumping cold-rolled strips (200-series)-- mainly used in making utensils -- causing injury to small mills, he said.

As per the industry body, China has an annual production capacity of the alloy at about 16 million tonnes while India's capacity stands at just two million tonnes.

He said domestic rates are hovering around $2,000 a tonne whereas the Chinese products are cheaper by $200-300 a tonne.

"We have already informed the Steel Ministry about it," Mathur said while referring to his recent meeting with Steel Secretary Atul Chaturvedi.