Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian countries remain the largest markets for Ukraine’s metal exports.

IRON AND STEEL

Alexander SHEIKO, expert with DerzhZovnishInform

Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian countries remain the largest markets for Ukraine’s metal exports.

Production

According to Metallurgprom Association, over the five moths of 2000 Ukraine manufactured 9,962,000 tonnes of iron, 12,574,000 t of steel, and 8,363,000 t of rolled steel. Along with this, iron output added 12%, steel output +16%, and rolled steel output +1%. Data on outputs of iron, steel, and rolled steel in the 5 months of 1999 and 2000 are presented in tables 1 and 2.

Table 1. Production of iron, steel, and rolled steel in Ukraine

Table 2. Outputs of Ukrainian metallurgical mills in the 5 months of 2000 (‘000 tonnes)

Exports

In the five months of 2000 Ukraine exported 10,900,000 tonnes of metals and metal products worth a total of $1,742,609,000. These numbers exceed the respective 1999 figures by 10.1% in terms of physical exports and by 32% in terms of export revenues.

Ukraine’s export recovery was called forth by greater export of sections (+41.5% to 250,000 tonnes), wire rod (+38.7% to 638,000 t), semi-finished products (+ by 21% to 3,495,000 t), cold-rolled flat steel (+8.9% to 514,000 t), hot-rolled flat steel (+6.1% to 1,842,000 t), and rebars (+2.6% to 1,111,000 tonnes).

Iron was the only commodity to suffer a setback in exports in the period under review. Iron exports lost 18% and reduced to 691,000 tonnes. Nevertheless, all the exportable metal commodities brought in greater export revenues.

As regards code 72 of the Commodity Nomenclature of Foreign Economic Relations (which embraces metals and metal products), the following articles held the first lane in Ukrainian physical metal exports: semi-finished steel including billets and slabs (32% of the total), hot-rolled flat steel (16.9%), ferrous scrap and refuse (15.6%), cold-rolled flat steel (4.7%), iron (6.3%), and wire rod (5.9%).

Table 3 illustrates Ukraine’s metal exports in the 5 months of 1999 and 2000.

No major changes were reported in regional distribution of Ukraine’s metal exports compared to the five months of 1999.

The Middle Eastern economies and Southeast Asia remain the largest markets for Ukraine’s metal. These two regions consume 26% (i.e. 2,848,000 tonnes) and 27% (i.e. 2,963,000 tonnes) respectively of the total physical metal exports coming from Ukraine. Along with this, metal exports to the Middle East grew 8%, whereas exports to Southeast Asia reduced 21%.

Within the period under review, East and Central European countries ranked the second in consumption of Ukrainian metal with 1,181,000 tonnes or 10.8% of the total. North American states were the next in row with 1,273,000 tonnes of Ukrainian metal or 11.7% of the total. Supplies to Europe gained 86% being fueled by growing exports of finished rolled steel. Meanwhile, exports to North America almost doubled owing to semi-finished steel and iron exports.

Remarkably, the share of CIS member-states and physical exports to the CIS are gradually increasing. During the 5 months of the current year, some 758,000 tonnes of Ukrainian metal worth $203,425,000 were supplied to this market. This outruns the 1999 physical export performance by 45% and the 1999 export revenues by 48%.

Data on regional distribution of Ukrainian metal export in the 5 months of 1999 and 2000 are presented in table 4.

Table 3. Export of metal products from Ukraine

Table 4. Distribution of Ukrainian metal exports by regions of the world

DerzhZovnishInform