According to a notice published in the Official Gazette of Turkey, significant changes have been made to the inward processing regime circular covering the mining, metal, and forest products sectors. With the new regulation, the inward processing permit certificate (DİİB) periods for steel products will be redefined according to different criteria, effective October 1, 2025.
Currently, most market sources in Turkey are trying to evaluate the consequences of the regime amendment and are seeking additional information from the customs authorities regarding the future process. Overall, it is said that from now on for all products and companies there will be a single period for export of the goods produced from the imported materials, while earlier the firms located in the earthquake-hit region used to have an advantage. “For now, it means that Turkish mills will be under more pressure to make their calculations far more detailed, especially those who have large-scale imports. Basically, if one imports two or three billet cargoes from China, they will then have six months to export 100,000-150,000 mt of longs,” a source told SteelOrbis.
In this case, considering the rather poor export activity for Turkish rebar in particular versus the more decent trading environment for HRC, slab importers are in a slightly better situation. Also, according to sources, during certain periods, scrap purchases may increase if semis imports are considered excessively risky in terms of export licenses. In addition, sources report that, according to August-dated amendment of the inward processing regime, there is now a penalty on top of the regular import tax in case the exports of final goods are lower than the volume of the initially imported feedstock.
New periods
- The duration of the documents envisaged for the production of hot rolled flat products from steel slabs will be determined as four months instead of six months
- The duration of billet and slab documents, which are envisaged for further processing activities such as cold rolling, debarking, coating, has been reduced from nine months to six months
- The duration of the documents envisaged for the production of hot rolled long products (wire rod, rebar, bar, profile, etc.) from steel billets will be determined as four months instead of six months
- The duration of the documents in which both hot rolling and further processing activities are foreseen together will be determined as long as the period foreseen for hot rolling (four months)
In addition, the duration of the documents containing hot rolled sheet of unalloyed steel under the code 7208 will be determined as six months if the ratio of the amount of hot rolled steel in question to the total amount of all products in the import list of the document is more than 50 percent. Also, the duration of the documents containing wire rod under the codes 7213, 7221, and 7227 will be determined as six months if the ratio of the amount of wire rod in question to the total amount of all products in the import list of the document is more than 50 percent.
25 percent minimum domestic purchase rate in production
In the production of products to be used in exports, the minimum domestic purchase rate for billet of iron or non-alloy (7207), wire rod (7213, 7221 and 7227), slab of iron or non-alloy steel (7207) and hot rolled coil sheet of iron or non-alloy steel (7208) was determined as 25 percent. Most market sources find this part particularly confusing and requiring further detailing, since “it is not clear whether it is implied for 25 percent in terms of feedstock purchases with regard to the total production volumes or only exports”. In any case, if steel billet and scrap can be and are sourced locally in Turkey, despite the supply-demand balance being uneven depending on the region, for steel slab there is no internal trade in the country aside from the intra-holding supplies.