The European Union will impose duties on imports of concrete reinforcement rods and bars from Belarus, to counter what it considers are excessively cheap prices, according to news on Tuesday.
The European trade bloc will impose import duties of 12.5 percent on rebar from the BMZ Byelorussian Steel Works, and any other producers in the country.
To date, most of the the steel trade investigations has been on China, where overcapacity has led to huge exports at low prices. Import tariffs on rebar from China were set earlier this year.
The EU has decided that provisional import duties are appropriate for Belarus, to prevent damage to the domestic steel industry. The investigation will continue for a further six months. Definitive import duties, which would normally be in place for five years, would have to be set by June 20.
The EU’s official journal said that import volumes of the product from Belarus had almost tripled from 2012 to 2015, reaching 5 percent of the EU market, as prices fell by some 25 percent. Imports in 2015 were worth around 180 million euros ($187 million).