China Iron and Steel Association (CISA), the country's industry group, is studying new strategies for next year's annual iron ore price negotiations, the 21st Century Business Herald said on Thursday.
CISA, which represents the world's biggest steel-making nation in talks with overseas miners, including Brazil's Vale, Australia's Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, said negotiations for this year were still ongoing.
However, an executive with the Shandong Iron and Steel Group, China's sixth-biggest steel maker, said 2009 negotiations had become meaningless and it "would be impossible to have new results basically", the newspaper said.
"We have started preparations for the negotiations for next year, but have not started talks with the largest three miners," the newspaper quoted the Shandong Iron and Steel executive as saying.
"(We have found out that) media comments have an influence on negotiations. Therefore, the association is likely to change its style of public relations to avoid embarrassment," the executive said.
CISA has deprived about 10 firms of their iron ore importing licences, the newspaper said, citing industry sources. They had said CISA was reviewing iron ore import licences held by steel mills and trading companies and could cancel 20 licences.
CISA officials were unavailable for comment.
CISA has been attempting to win a more than 33 percent price cut in protracted contract price talks with foreign miners, an effort analysts said was likely futile months ago.
It also attempted to cajole traders and small mills into cutting iron ore imports, but without much support from Beijing policy makers.
Chinese steel mills are expected to kick off annual iron ore price negotiations with suppliers unofficially during an upcoming international conference, usually held by CISA in late October or early November.
Source: Reuters
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