The Belarus Iron and Steel Works will redistribute shipments due to the European Union introducing customs duties on Belarusian reinforcement bars, BMZ Director General Anatoly Savenok declared.
He noted: “A strategy has been developed to redistribute our shipments to other target markets. Russia is one of them since the eastern neighbor is gradually recovering.”
Polish manufacturers were the ones to initiate the European Union’s antidumping investigation against imports from Belarus.
“It is interesting that we didn’t ship rebars to Poland in 2013-2014 because our prices didn’t fit the profile. When we returned in 2015, the investigation began right away. The European association of steel manufacturers Eurofer pursued a noble goal on the surface – making life easier for the local manufacturers. Yet German companies did not go to the Polish and Baltic markets because domestic prices in Germany were higher. As a result, Russian manufacturers entered those markets. Unfortunately, due to the investigation the decision was made last week to introduce customs duties on rebar import from Belarus,” said Anatoly Savenok.
The BMZ top executive said that a wave of antidumping investigations had rolled all over the world. 2015-2016 saw an increase in the number of various protectionist measures.
“The import of rolled steel from ten countries to the USA is being analyzed now, including import from Belarus although the BMZ share in this kind of products is under 2.4% of America’s import. The figure is below the 3% safety threshold set by Americans. It is obvious that the main WTO principles are violated,” stated the BMZ director general. (BelTA/Ukrainian metal)
