OREANDA-NEWS. May 07, 2013. China Steel Corporation (CSC) held the domestic pricing meeting for 2013 June shipments and announced the following statement:

IMF has downward revised the projection of global economic growth for several reasons. European sovereign debt crisis has not being solved; U.S. governments increase tax in order to deal with the fiscal cliff, moreover, the economic growth of developing countries is not as good as generally estimated. The foregoing causes the economic growth slowdown.

The World Steel Association has predicted the increase of global steel consumption only 2.9% in 2013. Recently buyers become much more conservative because of oversupply and low demand, and this situation results in the failure of attempting to raise the steel prices. In Asian market, the depreciation of Japanese Yen helps its export; meanwhile, the Chinese mills also try to uplift its steel export with considerably low prices, the above mentioned cease the continuing upward trend. Nevertheless, as for the second half of this year, mills anticipate that the prices will reach the bottom and bounce out supported by the rise of the raw material prices and the fill up of stocks.

To enhance the export competitiveness of Taiwan downstream industries and encourage buyers’ confidence, except Bars and Rods / ES products, CSC has decided to reduce prices for June shipment by an average of 2.08% ( the average decreased price is NTD442/MT.)

In addition, as for the market share of imported PLATE products has reached 45% for 2013 1st quarter, in order to guard the development of Taiwan’s steel industries, CSC will persist in collecting imported data and file an Anti-dumping suit in an appropriate time to response to the unfair trade behaviors from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Indian mills which try to sell these products continuously to Taiwan with extremely low prices.