The Middle East will face an acute shortage of steel beginning this month with suppliers from Europe almost halving the amount they plan to send to the region, according to news reports.

European steel mills have opted to divert supplies to the US following the removal of protective tariffs.
As a result, steel buyers in the Middle East are queuing up at traders and stockists to get whatever they can lay their hands on, the reports state.
Many Dubai traders, who sold nearly their entire quota for January in the first week of the year, are now struggling to get commitments from steel mills in the CIS – which supply 60 per cent of the region’s imports – for the rest of the first quarter, they said.
Vimal Sahityani, general manager of Duke Steel, the biggest steel stockist in the UAE, recently said: “Prices of some important steel products, such as hot and rolled long steel products, jumped from $378 a tonne to $415 between November and December last year. Now Korean steel manufacturers are asking for $475 a tonne from this month.”
As a result the prices of some steel products – especially those used in the construction industry – have jumped by 30 to 35 per cent. Prices of deformed bars, for example, are up from $1,400 to $1,800 a tonne in just a month.
Even with the promise of almost 100 per cent advance payment instead of the normal credit arrangements, steel mills have been unwilling to make large-scale commitments to buyers and traders in the region, the reports add.
The Middle East countries together import somewhere close to 1.2 million tonnes of various types of steel every month from manufacturers worldwide.