Yesterday the US Ministry of Trade and representatives of Seversal, NLMK and MMK has signed an Agreement limiting supplies of cold rolled steel to the US. The agreement establishes the minimum price levels for Russian exports into the US.

Dmitry Goroshkov, Severstal's sales director, had stressed that the agreement doesn't limit export volumes, and it is the first document, signed from times passed since the US acknowledged Russia as a market economy. This has set a precedent not just for the Russian metallurgy but also for the Russian economy on the whole.

"The agreement will allow us to keep the share of the American market within the quota set forth in the Comprehensive Agreement, because now all decisions, related to payment of any kind of duties lose their force and are replaced by the Agreement," said Goroshkov.

"It is provided in the newly signed document, that we will show cost price of our products for calculating minimum price once every six months, not every quarter as Americans insisted. Verification will also take place not as frequently - once a year (instead of two times a year as Americans wanted). Besides that, this agreement is a good protection against all possible investigations in the future. The only downside of the agreement is that shipments will resume only in the 2nd quarter of 2003,"said Goroshkov.

Dmitry Goroshkov states " within 45 days, which will pass from the date of signing of the Agreement, the International Trade Commission (ITC) will make a decision of presence or absence of damage caused by Russian imports".

Goroshkov says that on August 27 ITC has already made a decision, establishing no damage from imports from 5 countries, including Australia, Sweden, Japan, Thailand and Iran. In doing so it considered cumulative import of 20 countries, including Russia, which didn't have agreement at that time.

"The agreement offers hope for a just decision regarding stopping an antidumping investigation against Russia. This is even more so, as Russian and Japanese exports into the US in 2001 are comparable. They are respectively 268,000 tonnes and 357,000 tonnes," said Goroshkov.