The latest declining movement in Iran's rebar market, which started two to three weeks ago, is still continuing. On Monday, December 29, 12-25 mm rebar was offered at $640-670/mt on ex-stock Tehran basis, while no significant transactions have been recorded in recent days. Local traders had been transacting ready stock 12-25 mm rebar at $690-720/mt the week before and at $740-770/mt two weeks ago .
The current rebar market prices in Iran are the lowest levels which have been reached since the global collapse of steel prices started last July. Of course, in spite of their decline, the rebar prices in Iran's domestic market are still higher than the international levels. However, the latest decline offers some hope to local buyers that domestic rebar prices may drop as low as global levels in the near future.
In the last few days, the Government Trading Corporation of Iran (GTC), which is affiliated to Iran's Ministry of Commerce and which supplies some commodities to the local market, was offering Turkish and Chinese rebar through the Iran Mercantile Exchange at $627/mt and $607/mt respectively ex-Iran's southern ports for immediate delivery; however, bids from buyers for this material did not exceed around $500-505/mt, and so naturally no transactions were recorded, even though the suppliers' price was substantially lower than that of the local mills.
The latest declining trend observed in rebar prices, the low customs duty on rebar (11 percent), the distribution of imported rebar by the GTC, along with a lot of other factors, are all of great concern to privately-owned local rolling mills and even to the large state-owned steel plants such as Esfahan Steel. Stocks are piled up high in the warehouses of Iranian rebar suppliers due to the strong drop in their sales over the past few months - a trend which has intensified in recent weeks.