Vietnamese producers will raise steel bar prices by VND100,000 per ton this week in order to avoid losses, due to price hikes on imported steel ingot which they depend on for production, especially from China.
The Trade Ministry’s Trade Information Center said prices of steel ingot imported from China have climbed $440/ton, an increase of $20 and nearly $50 per ton compared with mid-November and October, respectively.
Accordingly, prices of steel bars will increase from VND8.2 million to VND8.3 million per ton, excluding value added tax (VAT) and transport fees.
Meanwhile, prices of rolled steel remain stable as domestic steel producers are competing with cheap Chinese rolled steel imports.
Tuoi Tre (Youth) Newspaper said prices of steel bars in the south will increase by VND100,000 per ton from today [November 28] to stand at VND8.2-8.25 million/ton while rolled steel is still at VND7.7-7.8 million/ton.
Meanwhile, Kinh Te Viet Nam & The Gioi (Vietnam & World Economy) Newspaper reports rolled steel prices in the north are now around VND8.4-8.7 million/ton and steel bars with diameters of 12, 14 and 16mm are worth between VND88,700 and VND155,000 per bar.
The Vietnam Steel Association (VSA), which has 55 member businesses, said it produced some 280,000 tons of construction steel in November, raising the total figure for the first eleven months of this year to 2.69 million tons. November’s production has all been sold while 2.6 million tons of the year’s production has sold.
Finished steel and steel ingot stocks nationwide are around 220,000 tons and 300,000 tons, respectively, according to the association.
Steel enterprises under the VSA have a combined capacity of six million tons a year. However, they are now running at only 60 per cent of capacity because of material shortage and supply surpassing demand.
(Vietnam & World Economy, Youth, Vietnam Economic Times)
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