Prices of MS rod finally dropped after several months, owing to lower demand and fewer construction across the country, said industry insiders.
However, they also said that the slight drop in the price of the key construction material will be short-lived as the construction and trading activities have only resumed after the Eid-related break.
According to the state-owned Trading Corporation (TCB) data as of July 25, 60-grade MS rods were being sold at Tk87,000 per tonne, slightly down from Tk91,000-92,000 last month.
Moreover, 40-grade rod prices were also down at Tk81,000 per tonne, which was Tk85,000 last month, the TCB data also stated.
However, insiders said that the prices of rod varied from one brand to another, and the price shown in TCB data did not reflect the retail market in all cases.
Jamal Uddin, owner of Kallyanpur Natun Bazar-based trader Jannat Enterprise, said that the prices of rods dropped by Tk3,000–4,000 compared to last month for both 60-grade and 40-grade variants.
“We are selling rod at different prices based on brand variety, BSRM for Tk88,000 –89,000 per tonne, AKS for Tk87,000–88,000, and Rahim Steel Tk86,000,” he added.
Md Shahidullah, general secretary of Bangladesh Steel Manufacturers Association (BSMA), said that the road prices dropped slightly due to the Eid-related pause in construction activities.
He also said that due to the halt in activities, demand reduced and they were selling construction materials at lower prices, incurring losses in process.
However, market insiders warned that rod prices may go up again if the government continued to impose scheduled load shedding in the manufacturing industry.
They suffer halts of around six hours of production time on average during a two-hour power cut in a steel factory.
To keep industry operational, the government should keep them out of the purview of scheduled load shedding, they surmised.
Moreover, due to the devaluation of Taka against the Dollar, the prices of rods from different brands may rise again as the country becomes dependent on imported scraps, the main raw materials of rods, said industry stakeholders.
A vice-president of the Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (REHAB), told Dhaka Tribune that the prices of rod merely dropped by Tk3,000–4,000 after nearly doubling in a year.
This slight dip in the price of rod won’t have a big impact in the country’s real estate sector, he added.
He also asked to formulate a regulatory body under the supervision of the Commerce Ministry to fix the rod prices in the country’s market as the rod manufacturers raised and slashed prices at their will.
However, steel industry insiders also said that they faced crises due to the surge in freight costs, the Ukraine-Russia war, global supply chain disruption and other factors that impact the entire global trade.
