Indian exporters’ hot dip galvanized (HDG) coil offers decreased by around $10/mt during the past week to $720/mt FOB, in response to slowdown in local market and give push to Gulf shipments which showed signs of reviving in earlier weeks, traders said on Thursday, August 9.
“The lowering of offers by exporters is a compulsion of international and local factors,” a Mumbai based trader said.
“Ex-China HDG offers have weakened during the past week and local exporters have fallen in line to stay in the market. At the same time, stock movements in the local market, across flat products have slowed down over the past weeks and exporters, traders and large steel mills are keen to give a push to Gulf shipments where modest volume transactions have started to emerge recently,” he added.
According to two other traders, while traders have been successful in concluding small volume transactions in Gulf Cooperation Council markets, buyers in the latter had been insisting on discounts to increase their commitments in the local market and informal discounting in earlier weeks has just been made official by lowering offers.
But it is still to be seen if $10/mt of price decline will be sufficient to attract more buyers of higher volumes from the Gulf markets, the two traders said adding that ex-India HDG offers are likely to slide further in the coming weeks if the local currency continues to depreciate and touch the INR 70 a dollar mark from current level of INR 68.70 a dollar mark.