(MENAFN- Qatar News Agency) Seoul September 14 (QNA) - Chinese steelmakers are threatening South Korean mills by taking advantage of their price competitiveness and by churning out better quality products a report by a local traders association said Sunday. According to the Shanghai office of the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) China's steel exports jumped 11.9% on-year to 62.34 million tons in 2013. This represents a 2.5-fold jump compared to 2009 the findings said. In the first half of this year the world's second-largest economy shipped out 41.01 million tons of steel a surge of more than 33.6% from the year before according to South Korea's (Yonhap) News Agency. While Chinese mills for now generally ship low-end products there is a push to streamline operations and make more value-added products such as precision sheet metal that can compete directly with goods made by leading steelmakers such as POSCO. Data showed that despite a surge in exports earnings from overseas sales moved up just 3.4% to US$53.48 billion in 2013 a clear sign that Chinese mills shipped out cheap products. As part of a plan to rectify this shortcoming and to pre-empt moves by trading partners to penalize Chinese steel products for "unfairly undercutting" prices Beijing is currently pushing to merge and consolidate the 88 steelmakers in the country to a more manageable number and even close non-performing facilities that can help reduce excess capacity KITA said. South Korea is the largest export market for Chinese steel products with products accounting for 23.2% of the domestic market share. (QNA)
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