Inflow of cheap Chinese steel raises concerns

The EU's anti-dumping duty on stainless steel cold-rolled sheets from mainland China and Taiwan has raised concerns that Chinese steel producers will accelerate their exports to Viet Nam. Photo baoxaydung

Local experts fear that the EU's decision, made in late March, will affect domestic firms who will have to compete with Chinese steel manufacturers.

Vietnam News Agency quoted the Ministry of Industry and Trade's Viet Nam Competition Authority (VCA) as saying that tariffs ranging from 24.3 per cent to 25.2 per cent and from 10.9 per cent to12 per cent were levied on Chinese and Taiwanese steel, respectively.

Pham Chau Giang from the VCA said that Chinese producers were likely to divert a part of their steel made for exports to the Vietnamese market, where the anti-dumping duty on Chinese steel was lower than that in the EU.

Viet Nam currently imposes import duty ranging from 4.64 per cent to 6.87 per cent on Chinese-made cold-rolled stainless steel.

Chinese manufacturers might also build steel factories in Viet Nam to make their products look like they are of Vietnamese origin and then export them to the EU markets in order to avoid the anti-dumping duties there. In that case, Viet Nam will be involved in the European Commission's tax evasion investigation.

Nguyen Van Sua, Vice chairman of the Viet Nam Steel Association, says such a scenario was not impossible. He said that the EU's anti-dumping taxes would result in a steel surplus in China. Therefore, a flood of cheap Chinese steel into Vietnamese market was a possibility, and that could affect the production and business performances of domestic enterprises.

In order to block the inflow of cheap steel, Sua suggested that authorities concerned should strengthen the supervision of the quality of both domestically-made as well as imported steel.

He noted that his association would closely follow information from local steel producers, help control the prices of cold-rolled stainless steel products from China, as well as compare and verify the dumping of these products.

Giang said that the VCA would also closely coordinate with the General Department of Customs and the ministry's Import-Export Department to monitor this issue and draw effective measures in the near future.