Just as expected, China’s crude steel output had exceeded 1 billion tonnes for 2020, approximating 1.05 billion tonnes or up 5.2% on year, according to the latest release by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on January 18.

The on-year growth was 3.1 percentage points lower than that for 2019, as the battle against the COVID-19 for most of the first quarter of 2020 affected the steel output and demand to some extent.

However, China’s crude steel production had posted on-year gains since April and the pace picked up in the latter months, mainly as the domestic demand recovered substantially since the second quarter of 2020 with the resumption of economic and industrial activities and Beijing’s investments in infrastructures as part of the economic rescue efforts.

For December alone, China produced

91.3 million tonnes of crude steel, up 7.7% on year, and the daily output also recovered 0.7% on month after having retreated on month for October-November.

For finished steel, the production for the whole 2020 grew more substantially by 7.7% on year to 1.3 billion tonnes, and the December output alone reached 120.3 million tonnes, which jumped 12.8% on year as against the 10.8% on-year growth for November, according to NBS data.