The Industries and Commerce Department on Thursday issued a GO authorising the Vice Chairman & Managing Director (VC&MD) of the Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation (APMDC) to appoint a reputed third party consulting agency for determining various aspects of barytes sales tenders such as the base price of barytes in line with the international market, tender timing and duration, allocation percentage for export and domestic market.
The board is mandated to review the recommendations of the appointed third party and take final decisions thereof.
The APMDC has been permitted to review the barytes contract price after every six months depending on the market conditions and, if the situation required, even during a prescribed tender duration, and accordingly increase or decrease the price in line with the prevailing international market trends.
The basis for price review should be on the basis of parameters like crude oil prices, global rig count data, exchange rate fluctuations, barytes FOB prices in other countries obtained through market research, barytes market and price analysis reports from a third party consultant and discussions with barytes buyers.
The GO further stated that the APMDC should determine the base price for specific quality of material and apply premium / discount for every 0.01 unit increase/decrease in specific gravity. It should not be less than 0.25% per 0.01 unit increase/decrease in the specific gravity.
Global changes
The fresh GO has been necessitated by a report by the APMDC VC&MD that there have been major changes in the global economic environment and the crude oil market witnessed a significant impact as reflected in the sharp decline in the prices.
The demand for barytes and its prices have accordingly fallen, impacting the sales of APMDC and therefore it needed to revise its previous orders governing the sale of barytes through tenders.
