Indian hot rolled coil (HRC) continued to perform strong, maintaining at higher levels during the past week at INR 42,500-43,000/mt ($578-585/mt) ex-works on the back of rise in bookings made by local integrated steel mills and fresh market speculation of producers going in for second base price hike later this month, SteelOrbis learned on Monday, September 14.
Most of the producers are considering going in for a second increase in base price to leverage strong demand revival seen to be sustained in the market and key end use industries absorbing the first price increase, reflected in rise in higher volume bookings received by steel mills.
They said that producers are targeting pre-Covid-19 HRC price level of INR 46,000/mt ($625/mt) ex-works, through phased base price revisions over the current quarter at least.
However, a section of the market sources said that producers will have to be cautious in too aggressively pushing up prices even though demand is increasing, considering that opposition to rising steel prices is gaining momentum from several industry organizations like Engineering Export Promotion Council of India (EEPC), Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI), Federation of Punjab Small Industries (FOPSIA), all seeking government intervention and some regulatory mechanism to administer prices.
They said that even though there have not been any noticeable resistance in the market and bookings continued to rise, HRC producers could not afford to ignore organized resistance brewing and strong lobby building up to avoid any possible government intervention and steel mills will therefore be cautious in going ahead with base price hike, at least for the second time in the current month.
$1= INR 73.55