MEIBC: THE SEIFSA (ONLY) STANDSTILL AGREEMENT (SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT)

STEEL INDUSTRY

Conducting your business

WITH THE DUTIES-SWORD HANGING OVER YOUR HEAD

How does the import duties affect your business?
(click here to share your experience)
Below is another testimony from one of our members

Dear Gerhard

As … , and a customer of Arcelor Mittal, … we find ourselves in dire straits.

Mittal consistently disregards their customer’s needs, regarding both pricing and supply. That’s not even talking about the quality of the products coming out of their rickety Mill – which is decidedly sub-standard to be polite. Trying to get any answers out of this “Steel Giant” regarding supply, lead times, pricing, or anything else for that matter, is not for the fainthearted! Many a stapler has been thrown across my desk in utter frustration and disbelief at the sheer struggle to get any form of constructive information in answer to my queries.

The criteria Arcelor Mittal use for price increases surely needs to be looked at from a more local perspective? Not to exclude the exchange rate, but to base our prices on world markets seems to be like comparing a ripe avocado with on that has started oozing rot (let that analogy in no way reflect the state of our country/economy). As for the import duties they want to impose – it is a kick in the gut for the downstream steel industry and a deal breaker for many businesses.

One has to ask … who exactly is the government trying to protect by imposing these ridiculous duties? Because it sure as hell is not the South African Steel industry, or the economy of this beautiful country we live in.

Sadly, all the “noise” being made about Mittal in general, as well as their scandalous import duties, seems to end on the screen on which it is written.

Arcelor Mittal is slowly killing off the steel Industry – and what then?

Can the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, and the Minister of Finance please stand up and be heard, in favour of the country they serve, instead of the foreign monopoly that is Arcelor Mittal.

Regards

We are all in this together.
Privileged and challenged to be South African.