Domestic Indian steel prices for the month of March, 2010 jumped up. This can be guessed from the fact that the cost of long products increased by 15 per cent and for flat products it increased by 12 per cent. The overall gain in the steel price was 12 per cent.

The thing worth mentioning here is that no category was left behind in this race. Prices across all categories increased. It was a pan-India trend and all types of steel products witnessed this surge.

During March, price of sponge iron increased by 18 per cent to become 27 per cent. The same was seen in pencil ingot also. Prices here went up by 9 per cent to 19 per cent.

And the trend shows that the producers of input materials have fully and properly utilized this opportunity. This has pushed the prices of the finished goods.

The result of this was total chaos. While the end users tried to pre-poned their future needs, the traders went ahead with stocking. This led to hoarding.

Experts believe that the current rise can also have an impact on the future price of coking coal and iron-ore.