Multi-billion dollar foreign steel projects in Vietnam are likely to face delays because of the global economic slump, even though demand in the country is forecast to grow 20% this year and 10-15% next year.

Foreign investors, including Taiwan’s Formosa, India’s Tata Steel, South Korea’s Posco and Malaysia’s Lion Industries, have pledged to invest nearly US$30 billion in steel projects with total capacity of about 25-30 million tons by 2025. But Pham Chi Cuong, chairman of the Vietnam Steel Association, which groups the country’s major producers, said the global economic slump would hobble on those plans. “Most of the big foreign-invested steel mill projects are likely to be delayed because of their internal difficulties, such as finances,” he said in an interview on August 27. Cuong said the two partners in the country’s biggest steel project to date, a $10 billion joint venture between state-owned ship builder Vinashin and Malaysia’s Lion Group, had problems coming up with the money for the required investment. The only foreign company that had made any progress recently was Taiwan’s Formosa, with its $7.8 billion mill project in Vung Ang, in central Vietnam, Cuong said. India’s Tata Steel was still sorting out a “land allocation” issue for the plant’s site with authorities in Ha Tinh province for its $5 billion project, he said. No great leap forward Half of Vietnam’s annual consumption this year of about 11 million tons will be imported but domestic producers had already voiced concerns about oversupply once all proposed steel mills are up and running within the next five years. “There are many question marks around how realistic these foreign invested projects are, given all the problems they are facing, both internally and externally,” Cuong said. “There will not be a Great Leap Forward here for the steel industry,” he said. The industry had a painful start to the year, with a slump in prices and demand. Some companies slashed work shifts by as much as two-thirds and cleared inventories by selling at a loss to service bank debt, Cuong said. A chunk of money from the government’s stimulus package, which the Prime Minister’s office has valued at $8 billion, has gone into housing for the poor and infrastructure, buoying steel demand, which he said would rise more than 20 percent to 11 million tons in 2009. “The worst is behind us but we still cannot be too optimistic because of the uncertainty in the recovery and the fast rises in world commodity prices,” he said. Demand would increase 10-15 percent next year, he added. Prices have jumped nearly 40 percent so far this year and are set to rise around 5 percent between now and the end of the year thanks to robust demand, said Cuong, a former deputy director of top state-owned steel group Vietnam Steel Corp. Hence demand for scrap steel, the main source of feedstock for Vietnam’s mills, are expected to jump around 35 percent this year compared to 2008 to 2 million tons, Cuong said. At present the country does not import any iron ore as a few of its mills are designed to use iron ore but if the foreign-invested projects are completed they would have to import iron ores from mines in Laos, Australia and Brazil from 2012, Cuong said. Source: Reuters

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The world's fish stocks will soon suffer major upheaval due to climate change, scientists have warned.

Changing ocean temperatures and currents will force thousands of species to migrate polewards, including cod, herring, plaice and prawns.

By 2050, US fishermen may see a 50% reduction in Atlantic cod populations.

The predictions of "huge changes", published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, were presented at the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago.

Marine biologists used computer models to forecast the future of 1,066 commercially important species from across the globe.

"The impact of climate change on marine biodiversity and fisheries is going to be huge," said lead author Dr William Cheung, of the University of East Anglia in the UK.

"We must act now to adapt our fisheries management and conservation policies to minimise harm to marine life and to our society.

"We can use our knowledge to improve the design of marine protected areas which are adaptable to changes in distribution of the species," he told the conference.

Sinking feeling

The world's oceans are already experiencing changes in temperature and current patterns are changing due to climate change.

Existing patterns of catches will change

To quantify the likely impact on sea life, Dr Cheung and his team developed a new computer model that predicts what might happen under different climate scenarios.

While scientists have made projections of climate change impact on land species, this is the most comprehensive study on marine species ever published.

"We found that on average, the animals may shift their distribution towards the poles by 40km per decade," said Dr Cheung.

"Atlantic cod on the east coast of the US may see a 50% reduction in some populations by 2050."

The invasion of new species into unfamiliar environments could seriously disrupt ecosystems, the researchers warn.

Some species will face a high risk of extinction, including Striped Rock Cod in the Antarctic and St Paul Rock Lobster in the Southern Ocean.

Sea-saw

But of course, as fish migrate polewards, fishermen in some areas will see their stocks increase.

The model predicts an increased catch in the North Sea - benefiting fishermen from Nordic countries.

But fishermen in tropical developing countries will suffer major losses in catch.

The socio-economic impact could be devastating, according to another study published recently in the same journal.

Thirty-three nations in Africa, Asia and South America are highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change in fisheries, according to scientists from the World Fish Centre.

Of these, 19 were already classified by the United Nations as "least developed" because of their particularly poor socioenomic conditions.

"Economically, people in the tropics and subtropics likely will suffer most, because fish are so important in their diets and because they have limited capacity to develop other sources of income and food," said Edward Allison, director of policy, economics and social science at WorldFish.

"We believe it is urgent to start identifying these vulnerable countries, because the damage will be greatly compounded unless national governments and international institutions like the World Bank act now to include the fish sector in plans for helping the poor cope with climate change."

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