Monday, May 02,
India’s steel demand, which grew 9.9 percent last fiscal year, is forecasted to grow more than 10 percent in the year started April 1, helped by demand for automobiles and spending on roads and ports, said G.K. Basak, executive secretary of the steel ministry’s joint plant committee.*
The prices of benchmark hot-rolled coils, used to make cars, averaged about 30 % more in the quarter from a year earlier, according to the Steel Index. Prices touched a 28-month-high of $837.8 a metric ton on March 8.
The rise in prices was primarily due to surging coking coal prices in the previous quarter. Record rains in Australia’s Queensland state, the world’s largest exporter of coking coal, pushed up contract prices for the quarter by as much as 74% as output of miners including BHP Billiton Ltd. Rio Tinto group and Xstrata Plc declined and flooded railway tracks hampered shipments..
“Coking coal prices crossed the $300 mark and are expected to move higher in the July to September quarter,” Rahul Jain, an analyst at RBS Equities India Ltd. in Mumbai.
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