The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is not considering a proposal to abolish a 5% duty on steel and cement imports, the bloc’s assistant secretary general for economic affairs said yesterday. “There was a proposal by Kuwait to lift the duty imports on steel and cement, and it has recently withdrawn its proposal,” Mohamed al-Mazroui told Zawya Dow Jones.
“So at the moment, there are no discussions or plans about this,” he added.
In May, GCC’s Secretary General HE Abdurrahman bin Hamad al-Attiyah said that the region’s finance ministers have agreed to abolish the duty on steel and cement imports, but a final decision was expected to be reached by the countries’ leaders later.
The GCC consists of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Saudi Arabia, which came under pressure earlier this year to lift duty on steel imports to ease price hikes that triggered panic buying, said last month it cannot lift the customs duty on the metal imports without the consensus of the five other GCC states.
In March, the trade ministry of the Arab world’s largest economy added for the first time the local selling prices for all imported steel to its steel price index on its website. The index sets the rates for 16 cities with different prices for the producers in each city.
The ministry also warned that it will take punitive measures against firms and traders that don’t abide by its rates or refuse to sell to customers.
In 2008, Saudi Arabia, which has a manufacturing capacity of 8.4mn tonnes per year, imposed a ban on steel exports to protect local markets as domestic prices of the metal almost doubled.
In the five years to 2013, the kingdom, fuelled by reserves accumulated from oil exports, will spend $400bn from oil revenue to develop infrastructure as well as build new schools, railways and universities.