Posting a year-on-year growthof 13.1% to 5.47 million tons, but down 3.8% points from 16.9% until March In steel trade of Korea, export growth rate has decreased this year, while import increase rate has become higher. According to the recent statistics by the Korea Iron & Steel Association on the exports and imports of steel including steel products andraw and subsidiary materials in the January-April period, the aggregatesteel exports in the first four-month period of this year reached 5,468,000 tons, up 13.1% from a year ago andthe accumulated imports of steel stood at 9,693,000 tons, up 23.4% from a year earlier. Taking into consideration the growth rate of 16.9% on a year-on-year basis in the accumulated exports until March this year, the monthly exports of domestic steel in April appear to have faltered, thus lowering the four-month export aggregate by 3.8% points, while import growth rate increased to 23.4%year-on-year in the cumulative inbound shipments from January through April, up 6.5% points from 16.9% in the January-March period. Imports of steel products and raw and subsidiary materials became to increase at a faster pace, while export growth rate of steel products dropped. Such deceleration in the exports of steel products was ascribed to the domestic steelmakers' reduction of their outbound shipments of long products, flat products and steel pipes caused by the unstable demand and supply conditions in the domestic market. In the case of some steel products including steel pipes, domestic steelmakers curtailed their output or implemented their short-term export policies. Exports of such raw materials as steel scrap decreased mainly due to the export regulation policies that the government took with the aim to stabilize the demand and supply conditions of the related raw materials in the domestic market. Meanwhile, the cumulative exports of steel products from January through April stood at 5.11 million tons, up 13.7% from the same period last year, and the aggregate exports of raw and subsidiary materials remained at the year-on-year increase of 11.0% to 156,000 tons. In imports, steel products surged 16.4% from a year ago to 5.73 million tons, but raw and subsidiarymaterials jumped 35.3% to 3.85 million tons, led by highrises in the inflows of pig iron and steel scarp in particular. steelkmj@snmnews.com