NMDC keeps ore price unchanged in May

Moneycontrol Bureau

State-run miner NMDC’s board has decided to keep iron ore price unchanged for the current month and will continue to sell iron ore lumps in the range between Rs 4500-Rs 4700 per tonne, while fines will be sold at Rs 2,610 per tonne.

The firm revises iron ore price each month after aligning with the landed cost of the imported raw material and also depending on demand. The firm has cut prices nearly six times since October due to an overall slowdown when steel demand hardly grew in the year gone-by as end-users such as auto and construction firms witnessed sluggish environment.

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NMDC had lowered the price of lumps by about seven percent last month and by 2.5 percent in February. It did not tweak the prices of fines (having iron content of less than 60 percent) for quite some time now

It is also rumoured that the state-owned miner may bring down the price of the steel-making raw material in sync with the international prices of iron ore, which has softened in recent times to USD 130 per tonne against USD 145 per tonne in recent past.

In terms of quantity, NMDC's sales of iron ore had declined by 17 percent to 5.3 million tonne (MT) in the third quarter of 2012-13, while the production was down 25 percent at 5.4 MT during the period.

The company has a total production capacity of 32 MT per annum at its mines in Chhattisgarh and Karnataka.

( with PTI inputs)