Russia initiates AD investigations against Ukrainian CR

The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Russia (MEDT) initiated an antidumping investigation (AD) against imports of Ukrainian cold rolled steel. The period of the review is 2003 through 2005. The initiators of the AD investigation were Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK), Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) and Severstal, which jointly produce 100 percent of Russian cold rolled steel products. According to the MEDT official statement, the dumping margin on the sale of Ukraine origin cold rolled steel in 2005 was 26.9 percent. The volume of export of Ukraine cold rolled steel to Russia rose by 149.1 percent from 2003 to 2005, while the share of Ukrainian cold rolled steel products in overall Russia imports of these products rose by 5.9 percent from 2003 to 2005 to 90.2 percent. According to the Russian producers, the volumes of sales of Russian cold rolled steel products decreased 11.4 percent and their share of Russian market was lowered from 91.7 percent to 80.8 percent due to price dumping by Ukrainian producers, the prices of which were lower than that of domestic producers by 17-27 percent in the period under the consideration. The total export of Ukrainian steel products to Russia in 2005 amounted to 1.75 million tons, 50 percent of which were cold rolled and hot rolled steel products. The target of the investigation are cold rolled steel under Russian customs codes TN VED: 7209 16 900 0, 7209 26 900 0, 7209 90 100 0, 7209 90 900 0, 7211 23 100 0, 7211 23 990 0, 7211 29 200 0, 7211 29 500 0, 7211 29 900 0, 7225 50 000 0, 7226 92 100 0, 7226 92 900 0.