A day after the Indian Steel Alliance announced that it will cut hot-rolled coil prices by Rs 1,500-2,000 a tonne, Steel Authority of India Ltd, a member of ISA, on Thursday raised prices by Rs 2,000 a tonne.

"The price has been increased by Rs 2,000 a tonne with immediate effect," union steel ministry officials told Business Standard.

Actually, the hike brings SAIL's HR coil prices at par with other ISA members Tata Steel, Ispat Industries, Essar Steel and Jindal Vijaynagar Steel. The uniform price effective Thursday is Rs 25,000 a tonne.

On February 1, all ISA members had announced a new price of Rs 23,000 a tonne. Midway through the month, Essar Steel announced that owing to a steep rise in input costs, especially metallurgical coke, it was raising prices to Rs 27,000 a tonne. Soon afterwards, other companies announced a similar hike in HR coil prices.

Before SAIL could revise its prices, downstream users started lobbying hard with the government to bring down HR coil prices.

Realising that it could become an electoral issue, the government announced a series of steps to check any further rise in prices.

SAIL was sounded out to curtail exports to improve the availability of HR coils in the domestic market.

In this scenario, government-owned SAIL could not revise its prices like other ISA members to Rs 27,000 a tonne. Its HR coil price remained at its February 1 level of Rs 23,000 a tonne.

The ISA has offered to cut prices to Rs 25,000. This left SAIL with no option but to raise its prices.

Meanwhile, downstream users represented by the Federation of Industries of India said that the reference price of hot rolled coils for the month of February was Rs 23,000 and not Rs 27,000 as most orders were booked at this price.

"In effect, HR coil prices have gone up from Rs 23,000 a tonne to Rs 25,000 a tonne," FII president D N Agarwal said. However, ISA sources said all its members, except SAIL, had announced the new price of Rs 27,000.