China Plans to Increase Coke Export Tariff    

After the ferrous ore price supplied to China has been increased 96%, Australian ferrous ore suppliers Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton recently announces to increase the price of ferrous ore supplied to Europe by 71%. The cost advantage of the iron/steel sector in China has therefore lessened. China is planning to increase the export tariff of coke, an additional raw material for iron/steel works, to cope with the situation.
    According to experts, China exports 15.0 million tons of coke a year. If the export is restricted, the output of steel in the world will descend which will make the consumption of ferrous ore fall.
   Relevant departments will likely raise the export tariff of coke by more than 5 percentage points to be 30%. The export quota of coke in 2008 is only 12.01 million tons.
   The growth of the fixed-asset investment in China was down to 26% year-on-year in the first half of 2008. The fixed-asset investment projects, however, consumed almost a half of the steel output. Steel works in China are faced with an unprecedented pressure of suffering loss.