Shandong Seamless Steel Tube Factory: Steel traders call for the elimination of local and industry protectionism
Hit：142025-01-07 14:38:35
Recently, a reporter from China Metallurgical News interviewed some steel trading company operators regarding the problems, difficulties, and bottlenecks encountered in establishing a unified national steel market.
The major bottleneck in the national unified steel market is:
Protectionism
It has been over a year since the release of the Opinion, but the progress in establishing a unified national market in the field of steel trade has been slow, one of the main reasons being protectionism. It has become a bottleneck in building a unified national steel market.
Protectionism has always existed in the steel market, especially during its downturn, "Ren Qingping, Chairman of Shanghai Wubo Steel Structure Materials Co., Ltd., pointed out in an interview with China Metallurgical News
Market research shows that local protectionism in the field of steel trade takes different forms. Some are determined by local steel mills directly communicating with local government project management departments and explicitly using local steel mill materials in the bidding documents, while others implicitly include exclusion clauses for foreign steel in the bidding documents. This situation is even more evident in the sluggish steel market, where local governments, in order to protect the local economy, are willing to violate market rules and implement local protectionist measures. In industry protectionism, group executives often force that all system projects be supplied by the material procurement department of the system, regardless of whether the department has the supply capability, in order to generate revenue for the system. This often leads to delayed supply and quality inspection errors. Some material departments simply subcontract procurement to qualified and experienced third parties, making them responsible for supply and increasing procurement costs.
Ren Qingping believes that protectionism can lead to distorted or inflated prices, harm to the interests of property owners, or be suppressed and harm the interests of steel mills. Many steel traders believe that the existence of protectionism not only sets obstacles for establishing a unified national steel market, but also seriously interferes with the normal trading order of steel, exacerbates unfair competition, and ultimately damages the interests of steel mills, steel traders, and end consumers.
Steel traders call for the establishment of a unified national steel market, which must quickly and thoroughly eliminate all forms of protectionism. Building a unified national steel market is a complex systematic project that requires the power of legislation and administration, adherence to goal orientation and problem orientation, and a combination of both symptoms and root causes and strengths and weaknesses. It effectively forms a set of relevant institutional mechanisms, laws, and supporting systems, and promotes a social consciousness based on rules and respect for the market. Only by clarifying the boundary between the government and the market, each performing its own duties, and complying with unified rules and laws, can we truly establish and achieve a unified national steel market.
Once the "Opinions" were released, many steel traders hoped to establish an efficient, standardized, fair competition, and fully open national unified steel market as soon as possible, in order to break through local protection and market segmentation, open up key bottlenecks that restrict economic circulation, promote the smooth flow of commodity resources on a larger scale, and promote the more standardized, healthy, and orderly development of the steel market.
There are many benefits to a unified large market:
Beneficial for reducing the three major costs and stimulating trading activity
Establishing a unified national steel market is conducive to reducing transaction costs, logistics costs, and financial costs, "the steel trader told China Metallurgical News.
Specifically, transaction costs involve various factors such as regional market access, customer and supplier density, futures market activity, and market sourcing convenience. The smoother and more prosperous the steel market, the lower the transaction costs.
Logistics costs include related expenses such as logistics facilities and labor costs between production and consumption. The connectivity and smoothness of logistics facilities determine the level of logistics costs. The Opinion regards "building a modern circulation network" as the core measure to promote the reduction of logistics costs. From multiple aspects such as building a national logistics hub network, developing new logistics formats such as multimodal transport and third-party logistics, and accelerating digital construction, it comprehensively promotes the cost reduction and efficiency improvement of logistics in the whole society.
Financial costs involve the cost of funds, credit costs, and inventory costs affected by supply chain management in the market. In the measures to accelerate the development of a unified capital market, the Opinion proposes to "develop supply chain finance and provide financial products that directly reach the operating entities in various circulation links", which will help reduce the financial costs in steel circulation.
A business operator engaged in scrap steel trading introduced that "there are differences in tax policies in different regions in scrap steel trading, such as the scrap steel recycling process. Although the new financial and tax policies for scrap steel have been implemented, there is still a certain gap with the requirements of the unified market. The collection of stamp duty on commodity trading links varies in different regions, and the collection standards for enterprises of different natures are also different. Generally, it is required to be levied at 0.03% of the purchase and sales amount. However, bulk commodities usually have high unit prices, low profits in the trading link, and high tax costs for trading enterprises. If a unified national market is established, it will effectively reduce transaction costs, promote resource circulation, and stimulate trading activity
Therefore, steel trading enterprises have high expectations for establishing a unified national steel market. They expressed their hope to do a good job in point-to-point upstream and downstream logistics distribution and resource allocation, reduce intermediate circulation links, and lower circulation costs; By integrating services related to the management and control of costs for steel consuming enterprises, the service value of the steel trade industry in the circulation process is reflected, providing high-quality resource allocation and distribution services for upstream and downstream steel enterprises, and contributing to the construction of a unified national steel market.
Ren Qingping believes that steel traders who have survived the baptism of the market generally have very mature procedures and professional experience in the procurement management, quality inspection, logistics, and capital operation of steel products, which is the result of division of labor and cooperation in the market economy. We hope that local governments, steel mills, and central and state-owned enterprises can correctly grasp the operating laws of the market from the perspective of a unified large market, create a healthy and fair competition environment in the steel market, take 'breaking down institutional barriers that hinder the market-oriented allocation of various production factors and the circulation of goods and services' as the core goal of further reducing market transaction costs, and introduce a series of measures such as' strengthening the unification of market basic institutional rules'; strictly implement the' national one list 'management model, break down the protection of regional steel brands by some markets; maintain a unified fair competition system, comprehensively clean up various policies that discriminate against foreign-funded enterprises and non local enterprises, and implement local protection, effectively avoid policy differences between state-owned and private enterprises in steel products, and thus achieve a truly unified national steel market, "he said.
