A torrent of policies introduced by the Chinese government to curb steel export will increase the export costs of China's steel producers by 13-18 percent in the medium- and long-run, said Xu Xiangchun, information executive of industry intelligence provider langesteel.com.

   As the latest round of international steel price rise is coming to a conclusion, Chinese exporters may find it hard to pass higher costs to downstream buyers. That leaves exporters with two choices: to continue export while swallow the cost addition themselves, or simply to stop export because of too lean profit.

   CITIC Securities analyst Zhou Xizeng holds that the government may take further adjustment measures on steel export, which, plus import license management, may turn the country's steel export control into a quantitative one.

   On May 21, the Ministry of Finance announced to add a 5-10 percent tariff to the export of more than 80 steel products as of June 1, merely more than a month after the government's removing rebates on the export of 83 steel products on April 15.

   The move was widely interpreted as the government's determination to restrict resource product export. Zhou Xizeng, however, held that the tariff hike is within industry anticipation but the timing beat expectations.

   It is learned that China exported more than 7 million tons of steel in April, a refresh record high. The surge was partly caused by the much higher international prices and also by the domestic companies' tactic of stepping up export before the export-unfriendly policies began to take effect.

   Xu of langesteel.com said that the remaining May will also see exporters race to export steel before June 1 comes. The export rush will result in a temporary supply shortage in domestic market, then to be followed by oversupply pressures, Xu said.