Painful birth of euro prices

摘要

The countries of the euro-zone finally abandon their old separate currencies this month. It is not an auspicious time for the inauguration of euro-only pricing. When the UK introduced decimal coinage 30 years ago there was a widespread suspicion that traders found the ensuing confusion to their advantage and did more than simply round up fractional prices. The debut of steel users. Mils are seeing old currency prices transformed into rather fewer euros than they had calculated a few weeks ago.It now looks as if final steel consumption in the EU in 2001 was marginally higher than in 2000, although by no more than 0.5 percent. This is the calculation made by Eurofer (the trade association of European steelmakers). However, as stocks had begun the year at a high level-built up by dealers in anticipation of a big rise in consumption or by importers and producers mistakenly convinced that they could gain share in an expanding market-mills saw orders drop off, and prices weaken.