Indian exporters of hot dip galvanized (HDG) have marginally lowered their offers for the second consecutive week by $5/mt to $665/mt FOB, but have failed to attract any buying interest, traders said on Thursday, November 15.
“Indian exporters have been forced to lower offers in line with global trends, particularly the softening in offers for ex-China HDG. However, the cuts in Indian offers have not been aggressive enough to trigger any buying interest given weak demand in the traditional export destinations like the Gulf markets. Buyers have been receiving offers but not are responding,” a Mumbai-based trader said.
“The stability of the Indian rupee against the dollar seen over the past week has not yet offered any additional incentives for exporters to aggressively price their offers. However, some commercial exporters feel that prices in the Gulf have bottomed out and that there might be a revival in buying over the next few weeks,” the trader added.
According to two other traders, with Malaysia imposing antidumping duties on ex-China and ex-Vietnam HDG, Indian exporters has been offered a window to push higher volumes into the Malaysian market but to be able to do that Indian exporters would need to be more aggressive in pricing their offers and would need to cut them by another $10-15/mt to conclude large-volume transactions.