Posted on 08 Apr 2016
According to METI forecast, Japan’s crude steel production is likely to total nearly 25.24 million tonnes during the second quarter (Apr-June) of the current year. This is lower by 3.1% when matched with the quarter before this. The Japanese crude steel production had totaled 26.05 million tonnes during Q1 2016. When matched with the same quarter a year before, the country’s crude steel production is expected to register decline of 2.4%.
Also, the country’s steel demand is expected to drop by 3.8% over the previous year during Apr-June ’16 quarter to 22.91 million tonnes. The fall in demand will be primarily on account of 3.1% drop in demand from construction sector. Manufacturing sector steel demand is also expected to decline marginally by 1.7% during the quarter.
Meantime, data released by the Japan Iron and Steel Federation (JISF) suggests that the country’s crude steel production dropped slightly by 1% over the previous year to 8.355 million tonnes during the month of February this year. The cumulative crude steel output by the country during the initial two-month period of the year has dropped by nearly 2% from 17.463 million tonnes in Jan-Feb ’15 to 17.132 during January to February this year.
It must be noted that the volume of domestic steel orders in the country had dropped significantly during the month of January this year. The domestic orders declined by nearly 6% over the previous year. The steel product orders during the month had totaled 5.54 million tonnes. This is down by 5.8% when compared with the previous month. Also domestic orders were down by 2.2% when compared with the same month a year before.
