Over the past week, local Indian cold rolled coil (CRC) prices have remained relatively stable or shown a slight upward bias in reaction to base price hikes announced by large integrated mills, but trade volumes have remained on the lower side with most industrials users cautious about concluding restocking bookings as the fiscal year draws to a close and with sales growth slowing down, SteelOrbis learned from trade and industry circles on Monday, January 13.
Sources said that benchmark 0.9 mm CRC prices have settled at INR 53,300-56,000/mt ($616-647/mt) compared to INR 53,300-54,600/mt ($616-630/mt) last week. According to the sources, even though the gains seen in the market have been owing to the expectations of the tariff protection likely to be offered by the government to mills without any improvement in demand, trade volumes will likely remain low as buyers will resist higher prices and remain cautious in making bookings due to the slowdown in their own sales growth during the last quarter of the fiscal year.
“All eyes are on the strong lobbying for safeguard duties on imports. Such a levy will sharply push up local prices. There are risks of it being counterproductive and of inflationary pressures building in user industries. A large section of steel users including exporters of downstream steel products oppose tariff protection. We must wait and watch how the new dynamics play out in the market,” a Mumbai-based trader told SteelOrbis.
“Prices based on protectionist measures are unlikely to be sustained in the long term. It will just raise the cost of manufacturing,” he added.
$1 = INR 86.59