At current levels, Myanmar uses just about 3 million tonnes of steel, but this is expected rise by more than 60 percent to exceed 5 million tonnes by 2025, according to U Sit Taing Aung, chair of the Myanmar Steel Association. 

In comparison, Singapore currently consumes nearly 5million tonnes of steel, while Thailand users about 11 million tonnes.  

Consequently, the authorities are raising efforts to produce more steel domestically to reduce costs. This is because Myanmar imports 90pc of its steel requirements. 

During a recent interview with The Myanmar Times U Sit Taing Aung shed light on the country’s progress towards developing a domestic steel production industry: 

What is the current progress in boosting local steel production? 

The steel industry is a strategic and expansive one. There is no way to succeed without government policy and support as billions of dollars are involved. To start local steel production, we must import the raw materials like iron ore and to do so, the government has to ensure the entire logistics chain is available, include the deepsea port, electricity supply and market strategy. 

Even if we get a permit for local production today, it will take at least 3-5 years to ready the entire supply chain. Until then, we will need to rely on imports.

What are the current challenges when importing steel? 

The process is easier than before and operations have become more transparent. The key issue is the cost of importing steel, as international producers have implemented anti-dumping tariffs and duties on exports. 

How can we check the quality of the steel imported? 

We do so with very simple methods. Currently it is by brand consistency. For example, we may use only one brand to make cars and not use other brands. There must be 10 quality steel sticks per tonne of steel imported. 

To truly gauge the quality, we have to do so in a laboratory. However, no one will go to such lengths and there is no law that states we must do so.  We currently have no criteria or guidelines with regards to the basic quality standards for steel imports and this is a major setback for the market.

With basic criteria in place, we can use quality products that conform to the criteria and the authorities can also check and minimise the use of fake products. Once we have the criteria and regulations in place, laboratories that can check the quality of steel will also emerge. 

Our association is helping the government set such criteria. We advised the technical committee of the government by cooperating with Myanmar Iron and Steel Association. The Department of Research and Innovation under the Ministry of Education leads the operation. It has taken longer than expected but soon we will have some basic quality guidelines. 

Why is it being delayed and what is the situation like currently? 

Our country can’t establish a system yet as local steel consumption is so low compared to the international community. The country is also not a top producer. 

I think the Myanmar government departments also don’t want to change their design and engineering software as they have been using the same system all this while and don’t see anything wrong with it. 

We need to adopt an existing system, such as the Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) or the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) standards in the US. So far, there is no clear policy directive for this. Currently the most common steel type – rebar – uses ASTM standards and the others use JIS. This is the most recent problem and everything is clogged up there.

The current situation is the technical committee oversees the practical use of steel in construction sector but the standards are drafted by the academic department. These two departments need to cooperate. Right now, we are on the right track. We have a standard draft for steel and it will be announced soon. I think a bill will be announced this year. 

Even though we will get financial and technical aid if we use JIS it is not easy to transition to it. There are two ways of adopting another country’s system: copy the whole system or make some tweaks. 

But we need to get their permission and sign an MOU with the respective country. Then we need to translate it to Myanmar language and announce that this system being adopted. We haven’t reached this stage yet. Things are only in the draft stage for now.  – Translated

Source: https://www.mmtimes.com/news/policies-standards-needed-myanmar-steel-production-demand-rises.html