BREAKING NEWS: China adjusts ferrous products trade taxes

Just two days ahead of China's Labour Day holiday, the country announced to adjust tariffs on the imports of 20 ferrous products and exports of five ferrous products effective from May 1 so as to "guarantee domestic steel supply and promote the high-quality development of the steel industry", the country's Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council stated in an announcement on April 28.

From May 1, China will completely remove import tariffs on a number of ferrous commodities including pig iron, semi-finished steel, recycling iron-steel materials, which refer to those imports that are of high quality and meeting China's steel scrap standards, and ferrochrome.

On the other hand, the duties on exports of ferrosilicon, high- and low-carbon ferrochrome and high-purity pig iron will be set at 25%, 20% and 15% respectively, the announcement said.

"The measures are meant to reduce import costs, increase imports of iron and steel products, facilitate China's crude steel production cuts, guide the steel industry towards lower energy consumption, and support the industry in its transformation, upgrading and high-quality development", the ministry explained in the notice.

For imports, the HS codes of the 20 products are with the first four digits as 7201, 7202, 7203, 7204, 7206, 7207, 7218 and 7224. As for the exports, the five products are all with their HS codes starting with 7202.

The link to the official announcement in Chinese: http://gss.mof.gov.cn/gzdt/zhengcefabu/202104/t20210428_3694144.htm

Written by Olivia Zhang, zhangwd@mysteel.com

Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com