In the first nine months of 2018 i.e. from Jan to Sep 2018, China’s iron and steel industry has maintained solid growth momentum, posting notable rises in both operating income and profits.
The numbers from MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) showed that the industry’s total main operating income during Jan-Sep’18 surged up by 14% y-o-y basis to 5.66 trillion yuan (816.7 billion U.S. dollars).
The industry’s aggregate profit during the period amounted to 358.7 billion yuan, up 65% year on year. Large- and medium-sized enterprises contributed 3.06 trillion yuan to the total operating income and 230 billion yuan to profits marking a rise of 14.5% and 86% respectively.
By the end of Sep’18, the debt ratio of large- and medium-sized enterprises dropped by 3.9 percentage points from a year earlier to 66.1%.
Due to the efforts to reduce overcapacity and the production ban on substandard steel, Chinese iron and steel producers have been able to sell their products abroad at better prices.
From January to September, China exported steel products of 53.08 million tonnes, down 10.7% year on year, but their aggregate export value has risen 6.1% year on year to 298.99 billion yuan. The export price averaged 5,633 yuan per tonne, up 18.8% from the same period last year.
As per CISA’s (China Iron and Steel Association) report, in Oct’18, the country’s daily output of crude steel averaged 2.66 MnT. Although the number dropped by 1.19% from the previous month, it remained to be the third highest in history.
As winter is usually a slow season, the association prompted local enterprises to carefully analyze the changes in demand to ensure the steady operation of the market. It also pointed out that recovering manufacturing investment and infrastructure construction would boost steel demand, as the country had taken a series of measures to ease the capital shortage facing private firms. In general, China’s steel demand will hold steady, mentioned the report.
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