Global oversupply drives cheap steel imports, threatening SA’s industry.
South Africa’s steel industry is facing mounting pressure as a flood of cheap imported steel undercuts local manufacturers, threatens thousands of jobs and accelerates the decline of one of the country’s most strategic industrial sectors.
This warning comes from Ayabonga Cawe, chief commissioner of the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC), who defended newly gazetted tariff adjustments and safeguard measures aimed at protecting domestic steel producers from growing global overcapacity and unfair competition.
Speaking this week following the publication of revised import duties on a range of steel products, Cawe said the local industry had reached what many stakeholders described as an “emergency situation”.
According to Cawe, imported steel products are cheaper largely because the world is producing far more steel than global demand can absorb.
