Bulgaria’s Association of the Steel Producers (BAMI) has published an official letter to the customs, aiming to draw attention to the problem of the growing longs imports from Egypt and Algeria to the country. The organization targets to convince the authorities to handle the needed tracking of the imports and to monitor the inflow of steel from the developing countries, which are not included in the safeguard system, established back in 2019.
According to BAMI, in 2021-2022 the imports of rebar and light sections from Algeria to the EU increased nearly three-fold to 267,000 mt, while Egypt in 2022 sold 59,000 mt of rebar in 2022. In January 2023 alone, 64,000 mt of rebar from Algeria and 18,000 mt of rebar from Egypt were imported to the EU, which represents a significant increase on the annual basis.
The EU has a valid safeguard system which covers the imports of 28 categories from the developed countries in the form of the quotas and 25 percent duty rate is applicable, if the settled sales volume is exceeded. According to the agreement, the developing countries, whose imports do not exceed 3 percent of the total imports of the relevant product to the EU, are not included in the safeguard measure. Therefore, Egypt as a developing country is not included in the system, while Algeria is included in the scope of “other countries” with a common quota.
Therefore, BAMI is concerned regarding the possibility of the trade measure to be compromised and also regarding the damage done to the local steel industry particularly in Bulgaria if the imports from the mentioned countries continues rising. The association calls for taking actions by the Customs Agency to monitor the import of reinforcing steel in Bulgaria in order to further adjust and modify the existing protective measure in terms of the list of the included countries.