Posted on 27 Jan 2015
The government has insisted on maintaining its anti-dumping duties levied on steel imports in a move to protect domestic producers complaining of being hurt by a flood of cheap imports.
Commerce Minister Chatchai Sarikulya yesterday said after a meeting with 24 representatives of producers, importers, users and state agencies that several Thai steelmakers remained in the red and were suffering from high production costs and particularly unfair competition from cheap imported steel.
"Production capacity use in the country stands at only 30%, which is not worth investment," he said. "The government must take care of the entire industry in a sustainable manner despite calls by steel importers for cheap products."
However, Gen Chatchai said Thailand still needed to import certain high-quality steels that Thailand could not produce.
Thailand uses 18 million tonnes of steel a year, mainly for cars, electricity and construction, but the country can produce only 8-10 million tonnes.
The government was urged at the meeting to support promotion of upstream steel production or smelting plants in Thailand.
Songwoot Graipaspong, chairman of the steel industry club of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI), urged the Commerce Ministry to call a meeting with all steelmakers to discuss and analyse entire production costs and come up with measures such as state-recommended prices for steel products from upstream to downstream.
The FTI also called on authorities to continue anti-dumping measures as appropriate, as certain countries have churned out steel and set relatively low prices that do not reflect actual production costs.
"The measures will not raise steel prices too much but level off prices of imported steel sold in the Thai market," Mr Songwoot said.
Under the country's anti-dumping measures, imported steel, mainly hot- and cold-rolled steel, structural steel and stainless cold-rolled steel, is subject to tariffs of 7-27%.
The Japanese Chamber of Commerce has urged the Thai government to raise its steel import quota.
