Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with FE content 63.5 percent and above) have showed little change during the past week stagnant at $78-79/mt CFR China, amidst inactive market conditions owing to holidays and buyers reluctant to complete bids, traders said on Tuesday, October 7.
According to Orissa based miner-exporters, offers were merely indicative and remained stable for the few working days during the past seven days with no volume transactions reported in the market.
With festival holidays, traders and miners are not interested to complete transactions since current prices offered negligible margins and they preferred to down shutters over the extended weekend, he added.
Market sources said that volumes and prices are expected to remain flat through the month since a large section of privately held trading firms would be ending their accounting year later this month and they would not be inclined to extend losses during year end considerations.
At the same time, buyers too are unlikely to come into the market considering that Chinese steel prices, particularly price of long products and rebar have continued to soften and steel mills are not expected to lock up liquidity in building raw material stocks, the sources added.