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Russia's steel exports - now amongst the largest in the world - have instigated a welter.of global anti-dumping restrictions, but the expiry of two important trade agreements with Europe this year could open the way to a new period of trading relations with the EU, reports Alexander Gurov.*
Russia has become one of the biggest international steel suppliers, exporting 26m-- 27m tonnes annually in recent years. This represents over half of its total output - last year, production of both raw and semis/finished steel in Russia increased by about 15% compared with 1999 and amounted to 59.1m and 46.9m tonnes, respectively.
In the past two years, the country's nine largest integrated mills produced almost 90% of the total raw steel (see table 1). After the Russian economic crisis of August 1998, only three -- Severstal, MMK and NMLK - were profitable, but subsequently, owing to a great improvement in exports, the Russian steel industry has become generally profitable.
The three major integrated mills mentioned above are responsible for over 55% of total steel exports, which includes more than 95% of exported flat-rolled products. Annual sales revenues of these integrated plants amount to US$1.2bn-1.7bn each.
In the last decade, Russia's production and consumption of steel drastically decreased (see graph) and it is only in recent past years that apparent demand stabilised at a level of 15m-17m tpy. Last year, however, apparent domestic demand for ferrous metals increased by 6m tonnes to over 22m tonnes. This growth was mainly due to increasing supplies of steel to the fuel and energy sector (as well as its plant-builders), the automotive industry, and others.
In the 1990s, a number of anti-dumping investigations began against Russian steel exports, which led to the introduction of protectionist import duties, or quotas restricting the imports of certain products. It is worth mentioning that before 1992, with the centralised economy, Russian enterprises had no free and independent access to either foreign markets or domestic consumers. These functions were performed by specialised export sales organisations and state planning bodies. Thus marketing and sales divisions established in Russian steel companies have had less than ten years of practical experience.
At the time of writing, about 50 antidumping investigations into steel and non-ferrous metals were being...