Price Announcement for January and February 2014 Domestic Prices

2014-11-21

On Nov 18th, 2014, Taiwan’s China Steel Corporation (CSC) held the domestic pricing meeting for January and February 2015 delivery, and announced the following statement:
On global economic perspective of view, Fed ended the QE3 of US, but interest rates will remain near zero for a "considerable time”. With strong and positive economic indicators, and government's deficit down to the lowest level since 2008, U.S. still leads the global recovery momentum. In the EU, new conflict within Ukraine and Russia, and the lack of investment made EU economy standstill and with escalating risk of deflation, it is expected that the ECB could apply QE policy proactively to avoid further recession. In China, given the export and domestic demand going down, and GDP growth slowing down, government applied policy for moderating growth, structure adjustment, promoting the reform and benefiting people's livelihood to mitigate the risk of decline. Several uncertainties such as financial system and currency fluctuation, geopolitical risk and epidemic of Ebola virus disease would affect the global recovery momentum, however global economy is in a slow upward trend overall though different regions will have different growth.
Slowing growth of global economy will lead to a decrease of steel demand in Q4, the traditional demand seasons, and spot price drop of iron ore and coking coal is dragging the steel price down further. U.S. steel market stays in consolidation at relative high, and recently several major mills announced their price increase to avoid downward pressure and stimulate the demand, while EU remained a soft price in steel market due to the economic stagnation. With the expanding of Chinese government’s stimulus policy and deregulation in real-estate market, confidence in steel market became stronger and stock has lowered. Steel price reached a relative steady state, the difficulty of supply and demand balancing has relieved. However, the following development of China-South Korea free trade agreement, cancellation of the regulation of duty-free export processing zones and tax refund for exported good deserve further observation.
By the downward demand, slump iron ore price, strong dollar and currency devaluation race between Japanese and Korean, international steel price has slightly dropped. Taiwan’s domestic downstream customers are facing weak price and slack market. To enhance the export competitiveness and promotion for order placing, and eliminate the hesitant attitude among customers, CSC has decided to decrease domestic steel prices by an average of 1.71%, or NT$ 352/MT, except cold heading and low alloy wire rod, EG, GI for computer and appliance, and middle/low grade ES, which are unchanged for January and February shipments in 2015.
Prices Adjustment for 2015 January and February Domestic Sales
Products    Adjusting Amounts (NT$/MT)
Plates    - 604
Bars and Rods    - 317
HRC    - 307
CRC    - 492
EG    0
ES    - 78
GI    - 383


Information Origin : http://www.csc.com.tw/CS/CSC_E/NC/neli/neli.aspx

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