DUBAI: The UAE needs to seriously consider imposing a “safeguard duty” on cheap Turkish imports of steel and protect the interests of the expanding steel manufacturing base here.
“The key players in domestic steel manufacturing had a recent meeting with the Ministry of Economy officials to state our case,” said Bharat Bhatia, owner of Conares, which operates two facilities in Dubai. “Turkey has a 35 million rolling capacity and can easily flood the local and Gulf markets with cheap imports of inferior quality, and to the detriment of local manufacturers.
“Every other country protects domestic players from such practices. The US has duties ranging between 15-20 per cent against dumping, while the EU is just as strict in not letting any overseas market flood their products. India has a safeguard duty on steel to protect itself from Chinese imports, and has just extended it to March 2018 (on a reducing basis).
“The Turkish manufacturers have lost ground in the US and are looking to any other market to compensate for the loss. It’s up to the UAE authorities to decide what the safeguard duty should be. We are not saying that as local manufacturers we should be given unfair advantages. “But a certain level of protection is something that the authorities can spare us.”
UAE’s steelmakers already operate under certain disadvantages. The UAE is the sole Gulf state that offers a 5 per cent duty exemption to steel traders who engage in cut-and-bend on rebar imports. “That has created a situation where traders bring in the shipments and then sell them off without any conceivable value-addition,” said Bhatia. “This is a clear violation against the spirit of why they were granted the duty exemption.”
