Union of Metal Exporters to distribute metal milling export quotas

At a meeting of the Executive Board of the Union of Metal Exporters adecision was made to establish a taskforce that will make calculationsaimed at distributing export metal supply quotas within the next week. Thetaskforce will include the representatives of the major exporters, theUnion of Metal Exporters pointed out. As it was reported earlier, beforeOctober 1, 2002 metal companies are expected to settle all controversies onthis issue, otherwise the Russian Ministry of Economic Development andTrade will put the quotas on auction.At the meeting two drafts of the methods of distributing quotas wereconsidered, which were proposed by the Novolipetsk and Magnitogorsk metalworks. The Novolipetsk works' method is based on the "supply record"principle, while the Magnitogorsk works' method is a tender held forcompanies willing to obtain quotas. The participants of the meeting pointedout the method suggested by the Novolipetsk metal works was closer toreality, but still some additions needed to be made to it. Additionally, atthe meeting the issues of determining a position on Ukraine's proposalabout restricting Russian ferrous metal exports and imposing a Russianquota for cold milling supplies to the European Union were discussed. .