Scrap metal dealers get another year

The Gov­ern­ment has ex­tend­ed the tran­si­tion­al pe­ri­od for ex­ist­ing scrap met­al deal­ers by an­oth­er year, giv­ing them un­til Oc­to­ber 14, 2027, to meet li­cens­ing and oth­er statu­to­ry re­quire­ments.

The Scrap Met­al (Ex­ten­sion of Time) Or­der, 2026, took ef­fect on Oc­to­ber 15, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism is­sued on Thurs­day.

The ex­ten­sion, made un­der Sec­tion 39(1) of the Scrap Met­al Act, 2022, moves the dead­line from Oc­to­ber 15, 2026, to Oc­to­ber 14, 2027.

It is the sev­enth ex­ten­sion grant­ed since the scrap met­al in­dus­try re­opened in Feb­ru­ary 2023.

Un­der Sec­tion 39(1), valid li­cences pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued un­der the for­mer Old Met­al and Ma­rine Stores Act are treat­ed as scrap met­al deal­er li­cences, pro­vid­ed deal­ers com­ply with the re­quire­ments of the 2022 Act.

The min­istry has urged all scrap met­al deal­ers to sub­mit com­plet­ed li­cence ap­pli­ca­tions to the Trade Li­cence Unit as a mat­ter of ur­gency with­in the ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

It said the ad­di­tion­al time would give ex­ist­ing deal­ers an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet the re­quire­ments un­der the new leg­isla­tive frame­work.

The min­istry said it would con­tin­ue en­gag­ing in­dus­try stake­hold­ers and rel­e­vant agen­cies to ad­vance the tran­si­tion to full com­pli­ance, while en­sur­ing the in­dus­try is prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed and le­git­i­mate op­er­a­tions can con­tin­ue.