Egypt's ministry of industry and foreign trade announced that protective tariffs on imported steel rebars would temporarily be applied at a rate of 6.8% at a minimum of EGP 299 per tonne for roughly 7 months.
The decision came as a response to the demands of Egyptian steel producers to protect the local market from imported steel rebars especially those coming from Turkey and Algeria.
According to the Turkish Statistics Authority, some EGP 9.1 billion worth of Turkish steel rebars were imported by Egypt between January and July of 2010. This is compared with some EGP 11.3 billion during the same period one year earlier. The per tonne price of imported steel rebars currently stands at EGP 3370 compared to EGP 4350 for domestically produced rebars.
Mr Mohamed Hanafi head of the Egyptian Chamber of Metallurgical Industries said that the Federation of Egyptian Industries called for the move after finding that imported steel rebars were almost 27% cheaper than their Egyptian counterparts.