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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (22032)	1/24/2005 9:46:04 AM
From: RealMuLan	Respond to of 116555

Mish, in 2004, China's steel production increased 20%, and its consumption increased 13%, and China still had a shortsupply of 17 million tons for steel (higher-quality ones) in 2004 so had to import. Internationally, China's production accounts for 25% for the world total, but its consumption counts for 28%. And due to China has a grand plan for new construction of new infrastructure in the next couple years, thousands of miles of new highway and new railroad, new facilities for Olympics, new bridges, to name a few..., my guess is that its steel consumption will continue to increase at least the same rate as last year. So even if the US and EU slow down, for this year, there will be no much overproduction. And BTW, compared to 2003, the growth of steel production in China already slowed down a lot. In 2004, due the the high cost of raw materials, a couple of dozen smaller steel plants in China already stopped production. In Feb., Chinese gov. will have some new policy in terms of regulating its steel industry, including environmental protection, energy consumption, quality issues... and will close more smaller ones and concentrate on a dozen or two big steel companies. This for sure will further influence the steel production in China.