RUSSIA AND USA CONTINUE CONSULTATIONS ON METALS TRADE








MOSCOW, March 13, 2001. /From RIA Novosti correspondent Alexander Ivashchenko/. This week the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation will send to the US Department of Commerce its proposals on beginning a regular round of the consultations on the questions of the Russian export of metals onto the American market.


	This was stated by a source in the Russian Ministry who also stressed that the Russian side plans to begin the consultations in the middle of April.


	Moscow has proposed discussing the questions relating to the all-embracing agreement between Russia and the USA on trade in metals which was signed in Paris in mid-July 1999 for a term of five years. The conditions of the Russian export of fifteen types of metal products onto the American market are laid down in this agreement. In particular, under this agreement in 2000 Russian hot-rolled steel was supplied to the USA. In 2000 Russia could deliver 325,000 tons of hot-rolled steel onto the American market but, by the expert estimates, the real volumes of the export last year were substantially smaller.


	The export of Russian hot-rolled metal stock to the USA is frozen because of the prices. Moscow is talking of its preparedness to supply 465,000 tons of hot-rolled steel to the USA in 2001 and is offering the Americans to buy steel not only in the quantities provided for by the stated quotas but also in the quantities which were not supplied under the quotas that existed.


	The previous round of the Russian-US consultations on trade in metals was held in Geneva in the middle of last December and did not produce concrete results.