Indian exporters of hot dip galvanized (HDG) coil have maintained their offers at $720/mt FOB over the past week, while they have increased discounts to $15-20/mt. These decisions have been backed by the weakening of the local currency but have failed to stimulate low shipment volumes, traders said on Thursday, August 16.
“After lowering offers in earlier weeks, most Indian merchant exporters have continued to offer discounts during the past week, taking advantage of the Indian rupee touching to an all-time low of INR 70 against the US dollar,” a Mumbai-based trader said.
“But the aggressive pricing did little to change the low number of transactions completed, largely owing to sharper fall seen in Chinese HDG export offers as well as the slower business activity in the Gulf region amid the approaching holidays,” the trader added.
According to two other traders, most of the discount offers are from merchant exporters which are eager to liquidate inventories but most of large steel mills are still mostly out of the international HDG market, instead prefer to push volumes into their domestic market as small volumes in the export markets are not attractive for them.