In a statement, he said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the State Market Regulatory Administration had recently spoken to iron ore price information providers and warned the firms to ensure the accuracy of their emissions.
"Relevant companies must not produce or publish false pricing information and must not increase prices," the statement said. Said.
The NDRC and the market regulator said they will strengthen market surveillance and will certainly remove any irregularities.
Esteel.com, a Shanghai-based ferrous e-commerce platform, said in an announcement Wednesday morning that one of its previous posts talked about a possible drop in iron ore shipments from Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) and Atlas.
The two companies neither confirmed nor called it "false information" and said the post was removed.
The state planner issued a public warning in late January, saying that the skyrocketing iron ore prices were speculation as domestic inventories were at their highest level in several years.
However, prices of key steelmaking materials continued to rise after the one-week New Year holiday. Benchmark iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange hit a five-month high on Tuesday, pushing gains over 20% this year.
“Authorities are not allowing any price hikes, but not that fast,” said SinoSteel Futures analyst Cheng Peng, noting that medium and high-grade ores are still relatively tight.
Dalian iron ore futures fell as much as 5.8% in morning trading after the NDRC announcement, recording the biggest percentage loss in two months.
China, the world's largest steel producer, imports more than 80% of the approximately 1 billion tons of iron ore it consumes each year.
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