Construction steel sales are sluggish.

Although the construction season has been underway for about two months, steel consumption is still very weak. The lack of consumption has led to a large amount of inventory at steel factories and businesses.

According to sources from steel factories as well as the business community, the amount of construction steel in stock at this point must be from 1.2 million to 1.3 million tons. The reason is that consumption in the past period has decreased by 40% compared to the same period last year, while steel production enterprises expect that from April, when entering the construction season, steel consumption will increase, so many enterprises have increased capacity. Currently, steel enterprises have to find every way to release goods, such as: Increasing sales discounts by 500,000 VND, even 900,000 VND/ton; including supporting transportation costs, subsidizing construction projects to attract customers but consumption is still slow.

Not only steel manufacturing enterprises are facing difficulties, but construction steel businesses are also "restless".

Some sources specializing in the construction steel business said that with bank interest rates of 22% to 24%, no one dares to "hold goods". Because each ton of steel has to pay interest of about 400,000 VND per month. Large enterprises that are holding 30,000 - 40,000 tons of steel are losing tens of billions of VND. And stores that hold about 200 to 300 tons are also losing hundreds of millions of VND.

According to NLĐ