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Mr. Oppenheim
To ask the President of the Board of Trade what is the cost to British industry of trading restraints on steel imports.
Mr. Needham
A precise estimate cannot readily be made, but the cost is likely to be small. In 1992 United Kingdom steel imports were unrestricted except from North Korea. For 1993, Community-wide quotas or tariff quotas are also in force against the Commonwealth of Independent States, Georgia, Bulgaria and the Czech and Slovak Republics, but United Kingdom imports of the products concerned from these sources accounted last year for only 1ยท17 per cent. of total United Kingdom steel consumption. The Government have made it clear in the Community that such measures should not be applied after this year unless they are clearly justified.