Australia has warned Beijing not to interfere in difficult commercial iron ore price negotiations and urged China to act as a market economy.
“We’ve been consistent in this regard. Negotiations are for the market. We will not interfere in the market,” Trade Minister Simon Crean said in an interview late on Friday.
“We’ve made the point to China: ‘We have recognized you as a market economy, act as one, don’t seek intervention from the government when it comes to market exchanges,’” he said according to the transcript issued by his office.
Crean was responding to local media reports that a senior official from China’s industry ministry had met with an Australian embassy official to press the point that China paid the highest prices for iron ore, despite being the world’s largest customer.
The trade minister said “all sorts of conversations take place” on a government-to-government level, but iron ore pricing was not one that was regularly discussed.
“We are reminded of the size of their market but that’s an important dimension of our trade relationship anyway,” Crean said.
China’s Iron and Steel Association in December said it would seek to streamline the number of importers and their prices in a bid to boost China’s leverage as global miners sought a 20 percent to 30 percent price hike in what were proving “quite difficult” benchmark talks for this year.
The talks between mills and suppliers, including BHP Billiton Ltd and Rio Tinto Group, are underway, the association said last week.
BHP and some steelmakers had agreed to a provisional 40 percent increase in contract prices, UC361.com analyst Hu Kai said, citing the mills.
China’s relations with the world’s biggest miners — Anglo-Australian companies BHP and Rio Tinto and Brazil’s Vale — remain tainted by the July arrest of Rio executive Stern Hu (胡士泰) and three Chinese colleagues in Shanghai.
Their detention came during fractious iron ore contract talks which later lapsed and just weeks after Rio Tinto snubbed a near US$20 billion cash injection from a state-run Chinese company.
Crean emphasised that Canberra had not sought to have the case dropped against Hu, an Australian passport-holder, and would not investigate Rio as a result of his formal indictment on Thursday on charges of bribery and illegally obtaining trade secrets.
“We recognize the Chinese legal system has to run its course, it’s a different legal system to ours,” Crean said.
“That’s the circumstances in which people go in there to do business or travel in there,” he said.
“We’ve treated it as a consular case, not seeking to interfere with the course of justice, only to bring it to a conclusion expeditiously and transparently,” he said.
There were “no allegations” against Rio, he said, and therefore “no justification or reason on the evidence before us” to warrant an Australian government probe of the miner’s practices in China.
FOPLP PLANS? The chipmaker said the budget was for fab construction and manufacturing facilities, but did not comment on reports of talks with Innolux Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) board of directors yesterday approved capital appropriations of US$29.62 billion to install and upgrade the firm’s chip manufacturing process technologies, as well as its advanced and mature packaging technology capacity. The capital expenditure budget would also be for fab construction and installation of manufacturing facilities, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker said in a statement. TSMC did not comment on reports that it was in talks with flat-panel display maker Innolux Corp (群創) to acquire an idle plant as it prepares to convert manufacturing equipment into a new chip packaging production line that is to use fan-out
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), yesterday said it has signed an agreement with Innolux Corp (群創) to acquire the flat-panel display maker’s plant in Tainan for NT$17.14 billion (US$530.6 million) amid supply constraints of its advanced packaging capacity constraints. TSMC plans to use the plant, including buildings and manufacturing facilities, for future operations, the world’s biggest foundry service provider said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The chipmaker did not elaborate on whether it would convert the plant into a new panel-level packaging factory, or expand its advanced packaging chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) capacity. The chipmaker "is working whatever it
The world’s biggest steel producer sounded the alarm about a crisis in China that carries the potential to send global shock waves, warning of a deeper industry downturn than major events in 2008 and 2015. Conditions in China are like a “harsh winter” that would be “longer, colder and more difficult to endure than we expected,” China Baowu Steel Group Corp (寶武鋼鐵集團) chairman Hu Wangming (胡望明) told staff at the company’s half-year meeting. For commodities including steel, the warning from Baowu underscores risks to demand and prices, as well as what ArcelorMittal SA, the No. 2 firm in the industry, called an
As monsoon rains were about to break over Pakistan, 14-year-old Shamila and her 13-year-old sister Amina were married off in exchange for money, a decision their parents made to help the family survive the threat of floods. “I was happy to hear I was getting married... I thought my life would become easier,” Shamila said after her wedding to a man twice her age in hope of a more prosperous life. “But I have nothing more, and with the rain, I fear I will have even less, if that is possible.” Pakistan’s high rate of marriages for underage girls had been inching