Kazakhstan's only steel-maker Ispat Karmet said it aimed to boost its output by more than 20 percent in the next three years and is hoping for China to lift anti-dumping duties imposed this year.
The firm, owned by Anglo-Dutch steel group LNM, has refurbished the plant at Temirtau in central Kazakhstan. It says it plans to boost output to 6.0 million tonnes by 2007 from 4.9 million in 2003.
China slapped a 14 percent anti-dumping tax on Ispat Karmet, which lies close to China, in January among varying taxes on other producers of cold-rolled steel in Russia, Ukraine, South Korea, and Taiwan who it considered were dumping steel.
"The Chinese side has agreed to look at these tariffs," Ispat Karmet chief executive Naval Choudhary told Reuters on a visit to the plant on Saturday. "Their first review of this question will be on June 1."
The move comes after Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who once worked in the Soviet-era plant at Temirtau, visited China earlier this month.
Choudhary also said Kazakh entry into the World Trade Organisation, of which China is already a member, would help the company. Kazakhstan has said it wants to join the WTO but has been slow to cut its own trade barriers with neighbours.
Ispat Karmet, one of Kazakhstan's largest industrial enterprises, delivers around a third of its exported steel to China, the rest going to other former Soviet states and Iran.
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