Global iron ore demand has ascended obviously and would definitely surpass the supply in 2010, said Mr. Luo Bingsheng, Vice Chairman of China Iron and Steel Association on an iron ore conference.
As he introduced, China's disordered iron ore import market not only caused excessive imports and congested stockpiles at ports, but also helped push up spot price.
China actually should only increase 98 million tonnes of iron ore imports in 2009 so as to meet the new-added demand for pig iron making, but the final inbound shipments were 180 million tonnes higher than 2008's imports.
This year, CISA and concerned department would jointly rectify the market, via improving the frontier of iron ore import enterprise, implementing import agent system and canceling the import qualification of small importers with annual shipments lower than 1 million tonnes etc.
He made a projection that China's apparent consumption of crude steel would keep stable growth to 610-620 million tonnes this year, up 8-10 percent over 2009, and steel import/export would flat with one year earlier.
Luo pointed three factors which would drag down China steel industry in 2010:
1) Domestic market: over-high steel production and increasing social steel inventory will result in over-supply in domestic market;
2) International market: Bleak demand in international market and trade protectionism will dampen China's steel export;
3) Steelmaking cost: The successive hike in steelmaking metallics price will push up steelmaking cost and pose heavier pressures to steel mills.
China crude steel production amounted to 54.97 million tonnes in March, up 22.5 percent year on year. Daily production was 1.773 million tonnes, second highest level in history.
(Compiled by Steelhome.cn) |
