Posted on 10/13/2009 5:41:59 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Iron ore imports 50M tonnes over demand
BEIJING: China's iron ore imports have exceeded actual demand by about 50 million tonnes so far this year and the oversupply leaves no room for further price rises, a senior official of the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) said on Monday.
"We believe the Chinese iron ore price is largely influenced by speculation on the market," CISA's Vice Chairman Luo Bingsheng told reporters at the sideline of an industry conference in Beijing.
China imported 405 million tonnes of iron ore in the first eight months of this year, up 32 percent from a year earlier, to feed its rapidly growing steel output.
The country's annual capacity is expected to top 700 million tonnes by the end of this year, with production of around 600 million tonnes of crude steel in 2009, hefty growth of 20 percent from the all-time high of 500 million tonnes in 2008.
The benchmark price of Indian origin ore with 63/63.5 percent iron in China has stabilised at about $90 per tonne, below the year's peak of $115 hit in early August, but still above the contract price of about $75 cost and freight.
Additionally, Luo called for a revision of ongoing annual price talks, which he said would benefit both steel mills and miners, but gave no details.
(Excerpt) Read more at chinadaily.com.cn ...
Ping!
50 million tons....Tanks.... about a million of them.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-10/13/content_8786947.htm
China ‘dissatisfied’ by Singh’s border area visit
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-10-13 13:42
BEIJING: China on Tuesday expressed its “strong dissatisfaction” over an Indian leader’s visit to a disputed border region.
“China is strongly dissatisfied with the visit to the disputed region by the Indian leader disregarding China’s serious concerns, “ said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
Ma said China and India had never officially settled demarcation of their border, and China’s stance on the eastern section of the China-India border was consistent and clear-cut.
“We demand the Indian side address China’s serious concerns and not trigger disturbance in the disputed region so as to facilitate the healthy development of China-India relations,” Ma said.
Indian media reports said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh toured and addressed an election rally in the so-called “Arunachal Pradesh”.
Ore ping
Since when is a million abbreviated “M”? Isn’t M = 1000 and a million abbreviated MM? (uppercase “MM”; not lower case “mm” as in millimeter)
On one side its amusing. Years and years of trying to negotiate with the Chinese government over this. The Chinese never really commit to anything; instead they insist that they work on other areas first such as trade. Its amazing how this always seems to benefit one (China) but not so much the other. Then the Chinese come back for more concessions and get even stronger still. They then start to become more belligerent than before since they have a growing upper hand due to those concessions from the past which are only seen as signs of weakness to those who run China.
And on the other side its frightening. Combine this stuff with a President hell bent on helping every thug and dictator around the world, this can only be seen as the ultimate sign of weakness. War cannot be very far off.
In Metric system, M stands for Mega.
KM is kilometer, for 1000 meters
MM would be Megameters
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