The downslide in the local Indian hot rolled coil (HRC) market has ended during the past week, with prices remaining unchanged week on week at INR 38,500/mt ($586/mt) ex-works, with sparse activity owing to festival holidays and participants awaiting new pricing signals from steel mills for current month deliveries, traders said on Monday, October 2.
“There are divergent expectations for the market over steel mills’ base pricing for October deliveries. As a result, dealers and end-users are in wait-and-watch mode,” a Mumbai-based trader said.
“HRC import offers are seen to be falling with offers moving down by around $30/mt on CFR basis and this could force local steel mills to revise base prices. However, the situation will become clearer over the next one week,” the trader added.
According to two other traders, with demand from end-users sluggish, dealers are carrying inventories on the higher side and even a marginal downward revision of base prices is unlikely to boost trading volume activity in the short term.
$1 = INR 65.47