Vietnamplus

The steel industry is facing lawsuits against tax evasion and dumping, according to information from the Vietnam Steel Association.

The Ministry of Finance has postponed its plan of increasing the most-favoured nation (MFN) tariff on imported hot rolled steel coil (HRC) from zero percent to 5 percent after collecting opinions from businesses and experts.

Escalating trade tensions and rising protectionism have caused a formidable pressure on Vietnamese steel sector, according to insiders.

As Vietnam joins more international trade agreements, dealing with and overcoming trade defence measures has become a top priority for Vietnamese businesses.

The anti-dumping duties imposed on stainless steel has not created a monopoly in the market, said the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).

The freshly-signed EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) will help the Vietnamese steel sector expand export markets in Europe, industry insiders said.

The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced preliminary rulings on the circumvention inquiries into Vietnamese cold-rolled steel (CRS) and corrosion-resistant steel (CORE) exports made from materials imported from Chinese Taiwan and the Republic of Korea (RoK).

In the second half of this year, increasing competition in product quality, prices and market share are predicted to force steel companies to work harder to maintain their foothold in the market.

Vietnam’s steel industry is facing 47 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations from importing countries, accounting for one-third of the total cases of Vietnamese goods, according to a report from the Trade Remedies Authority of Vietnam under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT).

Vietnamese manufacturers are set to increase their selling prices following the 8.36 percent hike in electricity price that launched from March 20.

Enhancing product quality and optimising production costs would help domestic steel producers compete with cheap products imported from China, said Nguyen Van Sua, Vice President of the Vietnam Steel Association.

The Vietnam Steel Association (VSA) predicts that consumption for steel in both domestic and foreign markets will maintain stable growth until year’s end, after rises in production and sales over the last 10 months.

A recent rise in anti-dumping lawsuits in the local steel industry has steelmakers worried.

Hoa Phat Group has announced that it churned out 179,400 tonnes of construction steel in August, 9,500 tonnes of which were for export.

Vietnamese steel has faced nearly 10 trade remedy cases in just over a month, which has once again put the industry under great pressure from trade barriers in other countries.

Vietnam’s steel exports rose 40.4 percent year on year to 3.41 million tonnes in the first seven months of the year, raking in 2.53 billion USD, up 56.3 percent.

Business associations have voiced their support for stricter management of scrap imports, but they also underlined the need to continue importing these goods to serve domestic production.

Vietnam’s steel production reached about 4.69 million tonnes in the first half of 2018, up 7 percent against last year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Improving competitive capacity to expand export markets and understanding of international trade regulations are significant for Vietnamese steel firms to respond to trade defence lawsuits in the context of growing protectionism, said Chairman of Vietnam Steel Association (VSA) Ho Nghia Dung.

Despite the imposition of anti-dumping duties on colour-coated steel products by Indonesian authorities, Vietnamese steel producers should not worry about the possibility of losing competitiveness, according to the Vietnam Steel Association (VSA).