Globally steel raw material prices are stable now, but Bangladesh will have to spend higher for its import because of the US dollar rate hike after launch of the crawling peg system, experts said on Tuesday.
Despite the stable international rates, the import cost of scrap steel will increase in Bangladesh as US dollar prices have increased substantially in the country, said Abhijeet Mahanta, marketing and sales director for South Asia at Atlas Commodities in India.
He spoke at a session of the fourth Bangladesh International Trade Summit 2024 at Pan Pacific Sonargaon in Dhaka.
Bigmint, a platform for price reporting, market intelligence and consulting for commodities of India, organized the summit.
Bangladesh's steel sector annually needs six million tonnes of scrap steel, where imports meet 90% of the demand and the rest come from the local market, the industry insiders said.
The growing demand has also created a supply shortage of scrap steel, said Salehin Musfique Sadaf, director of GPH Ispat Bangladesh.
India annually imports 70 million tonnes of scraps to meet its national demand of around 90 million tonnes, said Ranjit Kumar, head of sponge iron trading at Tata International of India.
The global prices of scrap steel may increase in the days to come, but Bangladesh would not face any scarcity of such raw materials thanks to its geographical location, he said.
Zain Nathani, managing director of Nathani Group of Companies in India, moderated the session of the two-day summit, which ended on Wednesday.