Official bodies should be set up by the Gulf states to prevent their markets being flooded with cheap steel imports, an industry conference decided yesterday.

The imports come mainly from Southeast Asia and threaten local manufacturers, the Arab Steel Summit 2009 in the capital was told. The industry in the GCC will also face dangerous problems over the next two years due to the international financial crisis.

The downturn had resulted in a huge surplus of steel building up in Southeast Asia – and much of this surplus was heading towards the Gulf since it was one of the world's richer regions.

"The World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements allow the GCC states and developing countries to take measures to protect their markets in a way that does not violate fair competition," said Abdulrahman Fouzi, an expert on the WTO and First Undersecretary at Egypt's Ministry of Trade and Industry.

"The US and Europe benefit greatly from the agreements and protect their industries in a very clear way, while the Arab and GCC countries have failed to benefit through the provision of direct and indirect support for our national products or the introduction of technical obstacles to imports.

"This has prevented Arab companies from exporting their products to the US and Europe.

"The WTO has received a total of 3,425 complaints from many countries between 1995 and 2008 but the protests excluded the Arab states. Governments should co-operate with the Arab private sector to lodge complaints with the WTO against foreign companies that flood our local markets with their products."

Tariq Al Zahd, an expert on the WTO from Jordan, said that, with the exception of Egypt, no Arab countries had set up special bodies to tackle the flood of imports despite the seriousness of the problem.

"Highly skilled experts are needed to deal with the problem and countries often seek help from specialists from Belgium and Sweden as they have the best understanding of the subject.

"The flood of imports will be a major issue over the next two years as several countries, especially Arab ones, will see large quantities of products coming from Asia, Europe and the US. Private sector companies have to tackle this."

 

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