LAHORE: China economic boom after the turn of the millennium helped China rising to the top. China is the largest steel producer in the world and contributes up to 50% of the total production. It started to expand production back in 2008.
In order to meet the local pent-up demand, the Chinese State Owned Enterprises kept on increasing production capacities. However, the slowdown in the Chinese economic growth and continuous global economic slowdown reduced steel demand.
Under those circumstances, large Chinese producers started to dump their excess production into developing economies and Pakistan is not an exception. Our nascent steel industry is not in a position to counter this dumping menace.
Although the National Tariff Commission (NTC) remained dormant for a couple of years, it came to action with the imposition of import duty on Chinese steel. The import duty has been imposed on the insistence of the domestic steel industry since it is unable to compete with Chinese steel.