As per the latest statistics of Customs, the export of China's finished steel products dropped to 1.41 million tonnes in April down by 15.6% from March or 70.5% from that of last year. This is the forth consecutive month that China steel export stayed below 2 million tonnes reaching the history low since November 2005.

At the meanwhile, China imported 1.62 million tonnes of finished steel products in April up by 0.35 million tonnes from previous month. And the import volume of billet stood at 0.67 million tonnes up by 0.23 million tonnes from March. The net imports of billet in April accumulated at 0.88 million tonnes, equaling to net import of 0.89 million tonnes in terms of crude steel up 0.85 million tonnes. The widening gap between import and export has triggered much caution.

The world economy was hard hit amidst the global financial crisis. To weather through the turmoil, nations across the world have put forward various packages to tackle the difficulties, but until now, the world economy shows no evident sign of recovery.

Against this background, the trade protectionism is emerging aggressively across the world. And most of the suits are against China, largely damage the Chinese steel export environment. But at the meanwhile, China unlike other countries, launched no anti-dumping investigations or adjusted no import policy for steel imports, resulting international steel flooded into China.

The external demand of China's steel plunged since last September with the single month export dropped from 7.68 million tonnes to below 2 million tonnes. However, the steel products import increased evidently at the same time, especially this year, the import volume increased from January 0.87 million tonnes to April 1.62 million tonnes. The import volume of billet also increased from 0.13 million tonnes to 0.67 million tonnes.

Definitely, the increasing influx of imported steel would largely affect the Chinese steel industry and further deteriorate the already oversupplied market. The gradual recovery of Chinese economy surely would support the world economy somehow, but there are still uncertainties amid the China's economy, and to survive the turmoil are the responsibilities of all nations, therefore we believe China should also take some actions to avoid its own industry been damaged by huge imported resources.

from.Mysteel.net

Source: steelguru.com