Barite export is not a source of foreign exchange
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As an important barium-bearing mineral, barite is widely used in petroleum and natural gas drilling mud weighting agents, various white pigments, paints, and petrochemicals, chemicals, and other petrochemical fields. In recent years, with the continuing boom in international oil and related industries, the international demand for barite has been in a high growth trend.
Barite is a non-renewable resource. China's barite total reserves of 360 million tons, ranking first in the world. According to data provided by Fujian Customs, from the end of 2005, China's existing barite resources can be exploited for only 50 to 70 years.
In order to protect this scarce resources from loss, the Chinese government has gradually increased its control over the export of barite. On January 1, 2004, the barite export tax rebate rate was lowered from 17% to 5%. On September 15, 2006, the export tax rebate for barite was lifted by 5%. However, despite this, it has not been able to curb the rapid growth of exports to barite. In 2004, 2005, and 2006, the increase in China's barite export volume still reached 10.4%, 28.5%, and 16.7%. The number of barite exports in China has been maintained at more than 3 million tons in the past two years, and the global trade volume of barite every year is about 4.5 million tons.
Tragically, the world’s first reserves have not been exchanged for China’s right to speak in the international barite market. As long as there is a demand in the international market, small workshop-type enterprises will desperately use the advanced technology and do not consider the use of advanced equipment and will not invest in technical deep processing. As a result, excessive exploitation of barite resources was exported in large quantities, but it only made a small profit. The price of barite products exported from China has remained at a level of more than 30 US dollars per ton for a long time. On the international market, the average price of high-content barium sulfate products made from deep processing of barite has reached more than 1,000 US dollars per ton. According to the latest statistics from Fujian Fuzhou Customs, China's second largest barite exporter, in the first half of this year, the province exported 236,000 tons of barite, an increase of 6.9% over the same period of last year, while the average export price was only US$38.74 per ton.