Outlook of the CIS market: August 22-28, 2006

Long products During the third week of August, regardless of general upward trend in the major world markets after a long decease in the prices, CIS export market for long products remained stable due to still very strong domestic market. Thus, Russian and Ukrainian billets were still offered at the same price range as two weeks ago, while offers of CIS origin long products were almost absent from the markets during last week. In the Russian domestic market, very strong demand for long products, especially for rebar and construction steel, created an unbalanced situation despite increased level of imports, where producers continued to raise price levels and limit supplies. However, if at the beginning of August, the optimal leader in price race was rebar, during last week, the situation changed. Thus, in Russian domestic market rebar prices fell 1.52 percent while that of angle accepted the leading position in price increase. In Ukraine, after performing an increase during the second week of August, prices stabilized on those levels, showing only small fluctuations last week. However, the demand is very strong and major long products producers started to hike the prices for September deliveries. Flat rolled During the third week of August, due to increased volumes of Chinese exports of flat products to the markets of Europe and Middle East, CIS producers of flat rolled were forced to lower their export prices. However, the pressure only affected HR, which deceased in average by $10/mt for Russian and Ukrainian materials. Yet, due to high domestic market demand and due to high level of quota utilization on supply of HR to the EU, the level of offers was very low during the last week. In the Russian domestic market, the week ended August 27 was characterized by stability. Although the demand level was still high for some type of products, prices did not show much fluctuation last week. In Ukraine, the prices for flat products retained their stable trend with high demand. The only exception could be HRC which decreased by UAH 10/mt (approx. $2) in the course of the week.