The introduction by our Federal Government of some antidumping duties on the Ukrainian tube and pipe import on January 1, 2006 was an appropriate and timely thing that the Government did to protect the Russian tube-makers’ interests. This decision was made on the basis of the antidumping research carried out by Russian Federation Ministry of Economics and Development’, Vitaliy Sadykov, General Director of CHTPS Group CJSC said.

Mr Sadykov also noted that the introduction of these duties could help to create a level playing field for Russian and Ukrainian tube and pipe makers on the local market.

‘All kinds of tubes and pipes that are subject to the duty (well casing, stalks, oil-and-gas pipelines, hot-deformed, boiler and bearing tubes) are being produced by CHTPS Group. In Russia, the total turnover of these tubes and pipes exceeds 2,000,000 tons, about 15% of which has normally been coming from the Ukrainian makers. Using the dumping techniques, they managed to continually increase their sales record, but with these antidumping duties, we may expect their small- and medium-diameter tube and pipe supplies and sales to remain fixed at a certain point,’ Mr Sadykov said.

Still, the duties do not affect the Ukraine’s largest seamless casing supplier in Russia, namely, the InterPipe Group, the company that imports over 80% of tubes and pipes from the Ukraine even though the country volunteered not to sell Russia more than 395000 tons of produce annually.

‘A fair competition will bring stability to the local market, making it more predictable and providing room for quality improvement, equipment upgrading and growth of steel-smelting capacity. Yet we expect the Russian-Ukrainian competition to become fiercer on the NIS markets, that is, in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan,’ Mr Sadykov noted.

He believes introduction of duties on five Ukrainian pipe types eliminated the unfair competition, yet leaving InterPipe the largest supplier.