Ukraine reports decline in iron ore imports

According to preliminary data released by Ukrainian Association of Ore-mining Enterprises, iron ore import of the country decreased 32 percent year on year to 617,600 tons in January-April 2006. Moreover, during the first four month of the current year, Ukraine did not import pellets from Russia whereas during the same period of the last year the import of pellets from Russian was approximately 207,000 tons. In additional, the import of concentrate from Russia increased 2.5 percent to 421,300 tons while that of sintering ore decreased 31.5 percent to 196,300 tons during the same period.