Over the past week, Indian exporters’ hot dip galvanized (HDG) coil offers have decreased by $10/mt to $645/mt FOB, while a few commercial exporters have reportedly offered additional discounts to push volumes overseas and maintain a market presence, traders said on Thursday, December 13.
“With outward volume shipments having been negligible over the past several weeks, local Indian commercial exporters have been forced into aggressive pricing to at least maintain a presence in key markets like the Gulf region which has been seeing extremely tepid activity in recent months,” a Mumbai-based trader said.
“Few transactions have been concluded with buyers in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) region but Indian exporters had to agree to discounts in addition to their lower offers even though the size of the discounts offered was not readily available in the market,” the trader added.
According to two other traders, the window to take the initiative to maintain a minimum market presence through lower offers and top-up discounts has been opened up by the Indian rupee weakening to INR 72 against the US dollar over the past week, which ensured that exporters have been able to sacrifice a smaller share of their margins.