The Rise in Polymer Prices With Official FOREX Control

Today, Sunday June 23rd 2019, the NPC Office for the Development of Downstream Industries (PDID) announced the base prices of polymers and other petrochemical materials for a week till June 30th. Meanwhile, the US$ value increased just by 1% in comparison with last week, which caused the polymer market to climb a very low slope in Iran.

According to the PIM, the PDID Office calculated the US$ value for Rials 110.899 being Rials 1.157 more than last week to formulate the new base prices. This small increase in US$ value recorded a rising trend, unlike all the world markets that had a downtrend last week. Though, the price increase could have been negligible, but the overall market for polymers in Iran was upward.
In fact, may be the decision makers had decided to go in this way in order to keep the trade volume as above as possible. It seems that authorities have figured out how to power up the polymer market, despite the fact that the stagnation in the polymer market is not unremarkable and the recession is scattered in different market zones. These kind of fractional decisions and pricing beside partial recession governing the whole market, will only increase the problems and difficulties of the converters. Of course, since the situation in the free market relies more on the supply and demand mechanism, so decisions might be in line with the global level of prices. That is, at this situation, with declining demands due to excessive price increases, we see that the free market is downgrading to a declining free price, just as it did last week. Should we wait for this and see how the markets will react? The important point likely to be emphasized is that the changes in prices, both incremental and decremented, except in one or two cases, were not very high and insignificant, and in general, it might be said that the market is being managed in a way that will be steady but with a very low upward trend.
Incremental Market:
To be short, the increases recorded respectively for:
1- ABS with about 2.5% reaching its price to Rials 119.373
2- GPPS and LDPE film grade with about 1.3% reaching its price to Rials 97.762
3- Bright SBR 1502, Dark SBR 1712, HIPS 7240, PVC emulsion and suspension grades about 1.05%
4- PET bottle grades (0.9%) and LLDPE by 0.05%

Downward market:
1- HDPE extrusion PE 80 1.3% reaching the price to Rials 109.281
2- PP fibre grade by 0.8%
3- PP injection by 0.6%

Daily official US$ value can be controlled from “NIMA”

The following table shows the total trade volume and ODTv indexes for the week started from Sun. 16th-June 2019 till Sat. June 22nd, 2019 in 172 times of deals. All prices are in Iranian Rials at the official exchange rate of Rls. 110.889, about Rls. 1.157 more than last week.