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| Steel prices fall 40% on panic selling in UAE - 25 Sep, 2008 | ||
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Khaleej Time reported that steel prices in the UAE have plunged 35% to 40% after surging by at least 90% in the H1 of this year on surplus stocks and panic selling by traders. Trade sources said that the price of Turkish and Qatar steel dropped from AED 6,000 per tonnes to AED 3500 in the last two months. Mr Mahendra Patel chairman of Building Materials Trading Group said that steel prices which had been kept artificially high by speculators when demand far exceeded supply have to come down to realistic levels. Mr Patel said that “There had been heavy speculative imports of steel by even those who were not in the business. As a result of such hectic imports, availability of steel rebars increased substantially. With the demand slowing down due to a slackening of construction activities, these stockiest, especially the new players, got panicky and started to sell at lower prices. On top of that, Turkish steel manufacturers also slashed prices overnight and shipped huge quantities to the region, further aggravating the oversupply situation.” Mr Shyam Bhatia chairman of Alam Steel said that steel prices which had been falling over the last 2 months looked set to rebound after the holy month of Ramadan. He said that “The price of reinforcement bars which peaked at AED 6,000 per tonnes in July has fallen to as low as AED 3,500 recently. We feel that prices will rise past AED 4000 per tonnes in the last quarter of this year.” He said that the GCC would import 6.75 million tonnes of rebar this year and the market was expected to grow to 8 million in 2009. He further added that “However, the last two months has seen a buying freeze by the major importers in region which in turn has led supplier markets like Turkey to lower production and in some cases even shut down their mills for early maintenance. Regional mills have also seen their volumes drop by over 50% and have frozen their raw material purchasing.”  | ||
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