India's crude steel output grew by 10.7% during Jan-Mar 2017

The Dollar Business Bureau

The World Steel Association (WSA) released a report with statistics of crude steel production across the globe. India is reported to have grown its crude steel production by 10.7%, to 25.76 million tonnes (mt) in the first quarter of 2017 from 23.26 mt in the same period during 2016.

Specifically for the month of March, India's crude steel production of 9 mt showed a 8.2% year on year growth from 8.31 mt of production in March 2016. The month-on-month growth is pegged at 11.11%, with respect to February 2017 output of 8.1 mt.

India outshined the top two economies of Asia, China and Japan, in terms of growth in crude steel output for this quarter. In terms of quantity, India lags far behind China which produced 71.99 mt of crude steel during March 2017. But the country managed to surpass Japan's production of 8.88 mt during the same month.

"World crude steel production was 410.5 Mt in the first three months of 2017, up by 5.7% compared to the same period in 2016," the report said. During January-March period in 2016, the global production was around 388.31 mt

The 67 countries reporting their steel production data to WSA (which constitute 99% of global steel production), have reported 145.0 mt of crude steel output in March 2017, registering a growth of 4.6% from March 2016.

China, the world's largest producer of steel, didn't loosen its hold on the position as its crude steel production for the first quarter of 2017 totalled 201.09 MT, experiencing a 4.6% growth from last year's production of 192.31 mt.

Japan, another major steel-producing country, witnessed a slow growth of 1.5% in production, reaching 26.22 mt output this quarter as against 25.83 mt in the last quarter.

The global steel capacity utilisation improved to 72.7% during March 2017, as against 70.7% in February 2017 and 70.5% in March 2016. 

Asia, accounting for more than 75% of global crude steel production, showed total production of 280.6 mt during the quarter, up 5.4% from 266.2 mt during the same period in 2016.