<span>Foreign buyers’ demand for CIS longs is still sluggish. Tense political situation in the Middle Eastern region is still the main factor, which prevents prices from growing amid short supply. By the moment, producers have already filled up March order book, and only a few mills have started offering April output. <br> At the same time, export prices for the CIS material have not changed much over the last two weeks. Turkish exporters keep holding rebar and wire rod offers at $655-665/t FOB and $675-685/t FOB, respectively. <br> At the Azov/Black Sea ports, Belarus SW was the first to start offering April production (on March 3) setting rebar prices at $660/t FOB ($10/t down in three weeks). However, given extremely low demand for the material, traders believe the supplier will have to reduce quotations by about $30/t if it is interested in sales. Metinvest International S.A. has started testing the market with offers of wire rod at $690-695/t FOB, following BMZ. Reportedly, Makeevka SW will preliminarily allocate for export about 40,000-45,000 t of April output. <br> At the same time, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih has closed March order book this week, and plans to make first offers of April production in mid March. The products were mainly sold to Iraqi and North African buyers. The supplier is forecast to make an attempt to raise wire rod quotations by $5-10/t. <br> Moldova SW has not determined longs production re-start date so far and thus has not set new prices. <br> As for the European market, only BMZ is active there. So, offers of rebar to be produced in April from BMZ have started to come to Poland this week at EUR 505/t ($707/t at the exchange rate EUR 1 = $1.4) DAP against EUR 493/t ($670/t at the exchange rate EUR 1 = $1.36) DAP in the second half of February. Metinvest International S.A. has not set prices for wire rod of April production yet, but it is expected that initial levels will be $695-700/t DAP. <br> <span> </span>Russian supplier of wire rod from Far Eastern ports (Evraz Holding) has reportedly closed sales of March output (8,000 t) at $710-715/t FOB. <br> <span> </span>Offers of finished longs from CIS mills have not been coming to the Caspian region for more than a month due to limited volumes available for export. <br> (Source: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.metalexpert-group.com/"><span><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">www.metalexpert-group.com</font></span></a> )</span>