- IF-rebar prices rise amid decent demand
- Property registrations rise by 12% in FY’24
Indian tier-1 mills have increased rebar list prices by up to INR 1,000/t ($12/t) for early-April 2024 deliveries, sources informed BigMint. Current list prices are hovering at INR 53,000-54,000/t ($636-648/t) on landed basis. It shall be recalled that some mills announced interim price hikes of INR 500/t ($6/t) during middle of the previous month.
Following this, trade-level blast furnace (BF) rebar prices rose by INR 700/t ($8/t) w-o-w to INR 53,400/t ($641/t) exy-Mumbai as per BigMint’s assessment on 5 April, 2024. Meanwhile, demand in the domestic market was subdued which weighed on the market sentiments. Likewise, prices in the projects segment also rose by INR 1,000/t ($12/t) on the week to INR 51,000-51,500/t ($612-618/t) FOR Mumbai.
Factors behind price hike:
1. Rise in IF-rebar prices: Induction Furnace (IF) rebar trade prices registered increase of INR 1,000-3,900/t ($12-47/t) across markets in the first week of April owing to good bookings last week. Also, shortage of scrap in the domestic market led to a surge in prices by INR 400-3,000/t ($5-36/t) across regions and supported active trade in semi-finish and finished steel. The inventory days of IF mills have come down to 4-6 days against 7-10 days seen in the preceding month. IF-rebar trade prices rose by INR 500/t ($6/t) and were assessed at INR 50,100/t ($602/t), exw-Mumbai on 6 April. It must be noted that IF-based mills command 65-70% share in rebar market.
The gap between BF-IF rebars widened by INR 1,000/t ($12/t) m-o-m to INR 3,500-4,000/t ($42-48/t) in April as compared with INR 2,500-3,000/t ($30-36/t) in the previous month. The tapering price gap between the two was one of the reasons behind the hike in rebar prices by tier-1 mills.
2. Property registrations rise in March: Property registrations in the country’s largest real estate market, Mumbai registered 10% rise y-o-y to 14,400 units in March 2024 as compared with 13,151 units in the same period last year, as per data released by Knight Frank India.
Property registrations increased by 23% m-o-m as against 11,742 units in February 2024. In FY’24, Mumbai recorded 1,31,265 units of property registrations, up 12% on the year against 1,17,611 units in FY’23.