Turkey and China are dumping cheap steel in the GCC and regional authorities should take action, according to the chief executive of Oman’s Al-Jazeera Steel Products Company, Bhaskar Dutta.

Speaking at MEED’s Middle East Steel 2010 conference in Abu Dhabi, Dutta said producers in those markets were selling off cheap steel in the Gulf, and called on the GCC Technical Secretariat for Anti-Dumping (TSAD) to do more to protect the region’s steel producers.

“Local steel companies have invested a lot of money [in the GCC] and there is a lot of dumping [of steel] going on in this region. We need the TSAD to help us put a stop to this.”

Dutta admitted that more crude steel production needs to be added in the GCC to meet high demand for semi-finished products such as steel billets, but said that steel producers could go out of business if cheap steel exports are not curbed.

“Turkey has been very aggressively marketing its products in the GCC and many plants in the UAE for example have either lowered or stopped production because they cannot compete,” adds Dutta.

He called on governments to introduction taxation to raise the price of imported steel. “We really need an anti-dumping duty like the levy charged by countries like India and China,” says Dutta. “The governments in these countries act very quickly to protect domestic industry. We need the TSAD to do the same for us.”