On April 28, the official website of the Ministry of Finance issued an announcement of the Tariff Commission of the State Council on adjusting coal import tariffs (hereinafter referred to as the “announcement”). According to the announcement, in order to strengthen the guarantee of energy supply and promote high-quality development, the Tariff Commission of the State Council decided according to procedures to implement a provisional import tax rate of zero for coal from May 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023.
The adjustment table of coal import tariff attached to the announcement shows that the MFN tax rates of seven categories of coal commodities, including unformed anthracite, coking coal, unformed other bituminous coal, unformed other coal, briquette briquette and similar solid fuel made of coal, unformed lignite and made lignite, are reduced. Before the adjustment, the MFN tax rates of the above seven categories of coal commodities are 3%, 3%, 6%, 5% and 5% respectively 3% and 3%, and 0% after adjustment.
Bank Of China Limited(601988) Research Institute researcher Wang Meiting said in an interview with Securities Daily that the reduction of import coal tariff is to encourage coal import, avoid further aggravation of the tight balance between coal supply and demand in China, affect energy security, and reduce the cost of coal and electricity in the eastern coastal areas.
According to Wang Meiting, at present, China needs to import some kinds of coal (such as coking coal and some high-quality thermal coal), with an annual import of about 300 million tons of coal, including both thermal coal, lignite and coking coal. It mainly comes from Indonesia, Mongolia, Russia and other countries, with high import cost performance. It is an important source of coal in coastal areas and Northeast China.
\u3000\u3000 “Since the second half of last year, the global energy supply and demand situation has tightened and coal prices have risen rapidly. Especially with the warming of the geographical situation and the sharp rise of international coal prices, the The Pacific Securities Co.Ltd(601099) representative coal price level has stabilized at more than 250 US dollars / ton, while the price of China Association for long term cooperation has stabilized at about 700 yuan / ton, and the market coal is around 1000 yuan / ton. There has been a serious inversion in foreign prices, and the price advantage of imported coal no longer exists. In the first quarter In particular, the average import price of coal in March doubled compared with the same period last year, and the import volume decreased significantly. Structurally, the proportion of low-end lignite and scarce coking coal increased. ” Wang Meiting further said that in terms of total volume, the reduction of import tax rate has little impact on China’s coal price. At the same time, as China’s coal price has no further upward space, it is expected that after the second quarter, the coal import volume will also decline further.
It is worth mentioning that affected by the high level of domestic and foreign coal market in the first quarter of 2022, listed companies in the coal mining sector in the A-share market have achieved considerable performance growth.
According to the data of choice terminal, as of April 29, 24 of the 29 listed companies in the coal mining sector of the A-share market (classified by Shenwan industry) have released the financial report or performance express of the first quarter of 2022, of which 22 have achieved a year-on-year increase in the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the parent company during the reporting period. The reasons for profit growth given by many listed companies are related to the year-on-year rise in coal prices during the reporting period.
For the future investment value of the coal sector, Fu Ze, senior researcher of Yuanrong investment stock department, said in an interview with the reporter of Securities Daily that the coal sector still has investment value throughout the year. Leading enterprises in the coking coal industry and enterprises with performance flexibility, such as companies with incremental high-quality coal production capacity, deserve attention.
