Nine steel industry associations from Europe and North and South America on Thursday 8 September expressed their "cautious optimism" at the decision of the G20 in Hangzhou of 4 and 5 September to set up a Global Forum to discuss the problem of steel overcapacity.
Welcoming the fact that the leaders of the G20 countries have recognised the "severe impacts" of global steel overcapacity around the world on their industry, the European, North American and Latin American steel producers are calling for this first stage to be followed immediately by concrete political actions on the part of the governments to reduce overcapacity, phase out subsidies and guarantee a situation of fair competition led by market forces.
"We appreciate the commitment expressed in the G20 leaders' statement for 'collective responses' to address excess capacity in the steel sector. This excess capacity and the government interventionist policies that have fuelled it are the root cause of the surge in steel imports currently being experienced in many of our home markets", they comment in a joint press release.
Stressing that they are "encouraged" by the G20's decision to create a Global Forum on overcapacity in steel and to ensure that this is followed up at ministerial level, they stress the need for a "robust" forum that includes participation by all major steelmaking economies.
"Our industry is at a crossroads. Governments must take action or we will remain in crisis. It is now up to the governments and the industry to work in partnership to create the Global Forum and define an agenda and process that will result in substantive policy actions to solve this crisis", the associations stressed, calling for the forum to start work as soon as possible, so that it can submit an interim report ahead of the relevant G20 ministerial meetings on this dossier in 2017.
These federations are the European association Eurofer, the American associations AISI, CPTI, SMA and SSINA, the Canadian association CSPA, the Mexican association CANACERO, the Brazilian association BSI ant the Latin American association ALACERO. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)