New Delhi, Oct 1 (PTI)
In a breather for domestic steel companies, state-owned NMDC today lowered prices of iron ore by five per cent to about Rs 3,200 a tonne for the October-December period.
“For domestic customers, we lowered iron ore prices by about five per cent to Rs 3,199 a tonne,” NMDC Director (Finance) S Thiagarajan told PTI.
Moreover, following the global trend for iron ore contracts, NMDC slashed the prices of the mineral exported to countries like South Korea and Japan by 13.3 per cent to USD 130-147 a tonne for the third quarter of the current fiscal. Top global miners Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Vale have entered into supply contracts with Japanese and Korean steel mills at lower prices than the Q2. The contract forms a global benchmark. “We followed the global benchmark to announce the reduction in prices for the current quarter over the previous quarter,” he added.
The price increase will be communicated to its domestic customers like Essar Steel, JSW and SAIL in the next couple of days. Complaining of high prices of iron ore and coking coal, the steel makers today raised prices of their products by up to Rs 1,500 a tonne.
NMDC produced 24 million tonnes of iron ore in 2009-10.It exports about three million tonnes of iron ore per annum to Japanese and Korean steel mills.Thiagarajan said sales in the first half of this fiscal is better than the same period a year ago. “There is no pressure on the production side as well,” he added
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