The public sector iron ore miner, NMDC Limited, has rolled over the existing iron ore prices to June month in anticipation of demand growth even as the off-take from the domestic steel sector remained subdued in the past couple of months, according to the officials.
Last time, on April 18, the company had revised the ore prices downwards by 6% to Rs 3,050 for iron ore lumps from Rs 3,250 and by a steep 20% for fines to Rs 1,960 from Rs 2,460 in the month of March, 2015.
The same price levels will continue until the pricing committee reviews the prices possibly in the next month.
Meanwhile, the production and sales volumes for the first two months of the current year have shown a decline. In the month of April and May, the production was declined by 15% while the sales were down by 20%, according to the company sources.
It may be recalled that the production and sales in the last financial year remained flat compared to the previous year's numbers at 30.44 million tonnes and Rs 12,356 crore respectively. The decline in production and sales volumes in the first two months comes at a time when the NMDC was gearing up to enhance the production by 5-8 million tonnes in the current year.
"Though steel prices are firming up a little these days the steel makers are continued to face the inventory issues. Because of this the iron ore off take was relatively low during the last two of months," an official of NMDC told Business Standard on condition of anonymity.
According to reports the steel consumption in the country marginally grew by around 3% last year.
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