Cheerful news for China’s construction steel suppliers, work has now resumed at over 58% of construction projects nationwide including both real estate development and infrastructure projects after the prolonged Chinese New Year holiday, according to China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) on March 10. But the difficulties some workers are encountering returning to their worksites and shortages of medical supplies remain a problem, the ministry admitted.
As of March 8, 111,900 construction projects had resumed operations, equivalent to 58.2% of the 192,500 projects presently under construction across China, Ni Hong from MOHURD disclosed at a press conference on March 10.
The reopening of building sites in South China has progressed faster than in North China, and 15 of China’s 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions saw half of their building projects resume work, according to Ni.
One month ago, China’s central government had noted that restarts among construction enterprises was proving slower than among production-related companies, as Mysteel Global reported, and urged construction companies “to conquer all the hardships to resume operations as soon as possible”.
Two issues are still hindering resumption of work across all projects, Ni observed. Construction workers who travelled to cities for Chinese New Year that are now under lockdown as part of prevention measures against COVID-19 are struggling to go back to their work sites, while at the project sites themselves, medical supplies for virus prevention such as masks, are limited.
“(We are) taking efforts to solve these two problems,” she said. “With the contagion prevention equipment gradually able to satisfy the need…the (resumption) work will steadily speed up,” she promised.
Chinese building contractors have also been seeking ways to make sure that work can resume as soon as possible, according to Ni. Those in South China’s Guangdong, East China’s Zhejiang and North China’s Beijing, for example, designated exclusive railways or coaches to fetch workers from their hometowns after negotiating with their respective governments, she noted.
Chinese steel mills and trading houses have also noted the steady recovery of building industry steel demand, Mysteel Global understands. “Judging based on our daily sales volume, now around 30%-40% demand has been recovered,” a steel trader based in Guangdong remarked.
An official from Shagang Group, China’s largest long steel producer in East China’s Jiangsu, also noted that 40%-50% of the local infrastructure work sites have re-opened but work on property sites has just started to resume, as Mysteel Global reported.
As of March 10, trading volume of construction steel consisting of rebar, wire rod and bar-in-coil in China hit 161,909 MT/day, after increasing another 19,555 MT/d or 13.7% on day, according to Mysteel’s daily survey across 237 Chinese steel traders. It was already above the 100,000-150,000 MT/d level for a normal winter’s day, Mysteel Global noted.
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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