MUMBAI, May 19: India’s Tata Steel, the world’s seventh-largest steelmaker, has said that quarterly net profit plunged 90 per cent from a year earlier, hit by high input costs and falling demand in its key European market.

Tata Steel reported consolidated net profit slid to 4.33 billion rupees ($80m) for the three months to March from 41.76b rupees in the same period a year earlier.

Sales rose by just over one per cent to 339b rupees from 338 billion rupees reported a year ago. High costs of important raw materials such as iron ore and coal also hurt operations, Chatterjee added.

Steelmakers around the world have been suffering from a slowdown in demand as industrial growth loses pace in emerging economies such as India and China and growth remains sluggish in advanced economies. Europe accounts for around two-thirds of sales and production for the steelmaker which has an annual capacity of some 28 million tons.—AFP