Iron ore miners plan to postpone any agreement in annual contract negotiations with steelmakers until as late as the summer, betting that demand and therefore market prices will improve.
Senior executives involved in the talks told the Financial Times that annual iron ore benchmark prices were still likely to drop for the fiscal year starting on April 1 but said that, by waiting, they hoped to avoid a large cut.
In its first forecasts for the coming financial year, the government-backed Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Econ¬omics yesterday said negotiated iron ore prices for 2009-10 would fall “substantially” after an 85 per cent jump in 2008-09.