VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) has confirmed that the agency is following necessary procedures to deal with the case in which four Vietnamese steel manufacturers have proposed to apply trade remedies against ingot steel and long steel imports.

 

Four Vietnamese steel manufacturers have proposed to apply trade remedies against ingot steel and long steel imports.

This is the second time Vietnamese enterprises have asked for an anti-dumping investigation against steel imports which has caused big difficulties for domestic products. They won in the first case, in which they raised an anti-dumping lawsuit against cold-rolled stainless steel imports.

According to Pham Chau Giang from MOIT’s Competition Administration Department (CAD), after the decision on the investigation was released, CAD will begin collecting information from involved parties to build an investigation report. 

Both domestic manufacturers and import companies now provide information as required.

The ingot steel products of the four companies account for 38.6 percent of the domestic output, while long steel products account for 34.2 percent.

“Once enterprises require anti-dumping investigations, this means they have suffered damage from import products. The lawsuit will be very costly,” she commented.

Prior to that, MOIT’s Minister Vu Huy Hoang released a decision on taking an investigation for applying safeguard measures for eight months at maximum against ingot steel and long steel products imported from several countries and territories.

The decision was released following petitions from four enterprises, namely Hoa Phat JSC, Thep Mien Nam Ltd, Thai Nguyen Cast Iron and Steel JSC and Viet Y JSC. 

The figures about imports in the period from January 1, 2012 to September 30, 2015 will be considered.

According to CAD, the ingot steel products of the four companies account for 38.6 percent of the domestic output, while long steel products account for 34.2 percent.

The plaintiffs reported that the ingot steel and long steel imports to Vietnam have soared in recent years, thus having negative impact on domestic production and business.

In 2012, Vietnam imported 466,800 tons of ingot steel, while the figure soared to over 1.5 million tons in 2015. As for long steel imports, the figures were 387,470 tons in 2012 and 1.2 million tons in the first nine months of 2015.

According to GSO, the steel import volume in 2015 increased sharply, but the import price was just equal to 94.7 percent in the same period of the previous year.

Prior to that, a report of the General Department of Customs (GDC) showed that Vietnam imported 13.85 million tons of steel in the first 11 months at the price of $490 per ton on average, an eight-year low.

Most imports came from China, 8.44 million tons, an increase of 58.3 percent compared with the same period of the previous year, amounting to 61 percent of total imports.

Do Duy Thai, general director of Pomina, commented that imports, especially from China, may kill domestic production.

NLD