STEEL FIRM PREPARES TO MEET INFRA BOOM

Anticipating a surge in demand due to the government’s plans to spend aggressively for new infrastructure, steel trader Mannage Resources Trading Corporation (MRTC) continues to beef up its steel inventory with the recent arrival of 20,000 metric tons (MT) of reinforcing steel bars from China.

In a statement, the company said it paid more than P43 million in taxes for its latest steel shipment to the port of Subic, describing it as a “modest contribution” to state coffers.

“With the arrival of our succeeding shipments, we expect our tax contribution to grow exponentially,” MRTCpresident Lawrence Sy said.

He stressed that MRTC’s rebars passed rigid international and Philippine National Standards tests performed by world-renowned testing companies TUV Rheinland and SGS-CSTC Standards and Technical Services Co. Ltd. in Shanghai, China.

The company said its earlier 5,000-MT shipment likewise passed local validation tests conducted by the Metals Industry Research and Development Center (MIRDC), the government’s primary materials testing laboratory for steel products, and Geoanalytics Inc., an accredited testing laboratory of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

These tests confirmed that MRTC’s rebars more than adequately met bendability, tension and strength tests in accordance with Philippine National Standards (PNS) 49:2002 covering steel bars for concrete reinforcement, he said.

With the Duterte administration’s plan to spend close to P1 trillion on airports, seaports, major roads and bridges and farm-tomarket roads in the next few years, Sy said MRTC wanted to be a major supplier of quality steel bars for concrete reinforcement.

Based on steel industry data, the Philippines uses 6 to 7 million metric tons of steel products per year. More than half of these are supplied by steel companies in China, Russia and Japan.