October 16, 2008

Fastener units call for mechanism to check steel prices

It is reported that Chandigarh Industrial Fasteners’ Association has appealed to Mr Ram Vilas Paswan union minister for steel to set up a price regulatory mechanism for iron and steel products. CIFA felt that a price regulatory mechanism would ensure that the main producers maintain status quo in prices for at least 6 months so as to help the SSIs from collapsing.

Mr AL Aggarwal president and Mr Pradeep Aggarwal secretary of Chandigarh Industrial Fasteners’ Association after a visit to Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and holding talks with the management on regular supply of MS wire rods and rounds to industrial fasteners based in Chandigarh said that they were very much impressed with the facilities at VSP. However they said that they were hit hard due to regular increase in the prices of iron and steel products and felt that the industry would benefit a lot if some mechanism were evolved to fix the prices.

They said the prices were being revised upward every month resulting in greater instability in the market and the small scale units in particular find it very hard to cope with the variation of prices regularly since they were having orders for fixed period of six months to one year.

As per report, Chandigarh has 350 to 400 fastener units consuming 8,000 to 10,000 tonnes wire rod and 4,500 to 6,000 tonnes MS rounds per quarter.