China’s total steel consumption is forecast to reach 889.8mn mt in 2020, rising 2pc from 875.3mn mt in 2019.
Chinese steel demand will maintain its uptrend for the third successive year in 2020, largely on high domestic demand from the construction sector, according to the China Iron and Steel Association (Cisa).
Finished steel consumption by the construction sector is forecast to reach 498mn mt in 2020, rising 2pc from 486mn mt in 2019.
China’s total steel consumption rose 6pc in 2019 compared to 2018, and finished steel consumption rose 8pc in 2019 over 2018.
The association also forecast Chinese crude steel production to rise by 2pc in 2020.
China’s crude steel output rose by 8.3pc to a record 996.34mn mt in 2019.
The country has now halted its new steel production expansion plans to fight over-capacity.
Manufacturing & infrastructure
Cisa expects demand from the construction sector and the home appliance industries to keep steel buoyant, offsetting lower demand from the automobile, ship-building, container-manufacturing and machinery sectors in 2020.
Stable demand from the petrochemical industry will also result in healthy steel consumption.
Vehicle production
China’s passenger car production and sales are forecast to decline by 2pc in 2020, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufactures (Caam).
China produced 25.712mn automobiles in 2019, down 7.5pc from the prior year.
Sales dropped 8.2pc on the year to 25.769mn units in 2019, as per Caam.
The decline in vehicle production and sales volumes was lower by 4.2 and 5.4 percentage points, respectively, over the previous year.