"The concept of proving an injury to initiate a trade measure is outdated," he told ET in an exclusive interaction, emphasising on the need for immediate action to be taken by the government as domestic steel prices have fallen to an over three-year low.
"We normally don't react to what is happening in the short term or have any knee-jerk reactions, but if this continues and we find that no changes are happening, our forecast is that the steel industry will not be investing the future capex that was initially envisaged," Oommen said.
Increasing the basic customs duty to 12.5% from 7.5% at present, implementing the 'melt-and-pour' norm in free trade agreements (FTAs), and making BIS norms more stringent could be some of the measures that the government can look at implementing in the short-term, he said.
Under the melt-and-pour norm, only those steel products for which raw steel is melted and then poured into molds to give shape in the same country will be eligible for tax benefits under FTA.
Imports of flat steel products during January-June this year increased 38% year on year to 3.42 million tonnes, with South Korea, Japan and China emerging top exporters, data from Numero Analytics showed.
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