Platts Steel  said that the Egyptian government’s decision to exempt the industries used for flat steel from the development fee of 10% on imports of final steel products that it supports, in particular, Turkish exports of steel plate to Egypt, which witnessed a significant increase this year according to local sources in Turkey.

Platts Steel  added that this exemption helps to continue export shipments to Egypt despite the tension between Turkey and Egypt over Libya, and indicated that Turkey’s exports to Egypt in the first five months of 2020 witnessed a significant increase. According to the Turkish Statistics Institute, Turkish factories exported 228,000 tons of HRC in January to May 2020, a sharp increase from the 69,400 tons that were exported in the same period last year. It is also significantly higher than the total HRC exports in 2018, which amounted to 107,000 tons.

Commenting on this, Dr. Alia Al Mahdi, Chairman of the Egyptian Association for Iron and Steel Industry, said that the exemption decision supports the foreign industry exported to Egypt at the expense of the national industry and leads to an unjustified increase in imports, which is not consistent with the state policy in supporting domestic production and reducing imports that have an equivalent From local production and of the highest quality available.

In addition, Turkey itself – one of the largest steel producing and exporting countries in the world – protects its domestic industry by imposing fixed customs duties of 23% on flats versus only 5% customs duties on imports of flats in Egypt.

And that this exemption wastes 1.4 billion pounds of additional annual resources for the public treasury that are most in need with a depletion of hard currency reserves and therefore must be abolished and the development fee applied to all imports without exception, regardless of the importer.