The Russian Federation's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MEDT) has terminated its antidumping (AD) investigation into imports of pre-painted steel products originating from China (including Taiwan and the special administrative districts of Hong Kong and Macau), South Korea, Belgium, Finland and Kazakhstan with the conclusion that there are no grounds for imposing AD duties.
The MEDT confirmed the dumping by the countries under investigation in 2007, but considered that material damage was not thereby caused to the Russian economy.
According to the MEDT, in 2004-2007 the capacity of Russia's pre-painted steel products market increased by 2.7 times, with imports of these products rising by more than three times. The Russian producers increased their production capacities by 72.5 percent, while the volume of their sales in the domestic market went up by 197.5 percent. The Russian producers' share of the domestic pre-painted steel products market has decreased; however, due to increased consumption, they were unable to fully meet the growing demand with their existing production capacities. Moreover, although imports of pre-painted steel products increased in 2008 by 20 percent to 551,740 mt, the share of products originating from China, South Korea, Belgium, Finland and Kazakhstan decreased year on year from 84.5 percent to 79.5 percent.
Currently, Russia's import duty on pre-painted steel products stands at five percent, excepting Kazakhstan for which the import duty on the products in question stands at zero percent.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, the investigation was initiated on March 18, 2008, following a complaint filed by three Russian pre-painted steel producers, namely, Severstal, Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) and Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK). The products subject to the investigation included pre-painted cold rolled steel and pre-painted galvanized steel with no restrictions according to merchandise width and thickness.