Abu Dhabi: Prices of construction steel continue to soar consistently on month-to-month basis according to contractors and official records.
Abu Dhabi's Department of Planning and Economy yesterday issued a building materials price index, tracking the prices of 22 materials constituting 90 per cent of the basic construction requirements, where the price increase varied between different steel products from 4 to 19 per cent by the end of June compared to the end of May.
"A more realistic indicator is the price of construction steel, which during that period increased from Dh5700 to Dh6400," Engineer Mohammad Saeed Hussain, the general manager at Al Mansouri Contracting told Gulf News.
According to the index, prices of steel mesh increased by 19 per cent, and deformed steel by 17 per cent.
In contrast, the index revealed stable prices for cement, owing to the efforts by the Ministry of Economy to introduce control to the market, where local producers maintain the upper hand, while steel, which is mostly imported, is beyond such control.
"The only local steel producer, Emirates Steel, only meets 15 per cent of the total demand, leaving the price level in the hands of the exporter," Hussain explained.
The Contractors Society is pushing for a mandatory clause in contracts stipulating that they are to be only liable for incurring four to six per cent of prices increase compared to the original bid.
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