Reinforcing Bars Output in April 2020 Up 1.1% YoY
According to National Bureau of Statistics, reinforcing bars output totaled 21.116 million tons in April 2020, up 1.1% year on year. Reinforcing bars output during January-April, 2020 totaled 74.170 million tons, a decrease of 1.0% year on year. In April, wire rod output attained 12.937 million tons, down 3.1% year on year and accumulative output in the first four months totaled 46.416 million tons, a year-on-year decrease of 3.1%.
In the first four months of 2020, crude steel output was up 1.3% year on year and pig iron output rose by 1.3% year on year, yet the steel products output dropped by 0.2% year on year, reflecting decelerated steel products production due to the COVID-19 and high inventory.
In April, daily output of crude steel and pig iron increased by 11.3% and 11.1% respectively from March, and most of steel products output increased. Among them, daily average output of reinforcing bars was 703,900 tons, up 90,500 tons or 14.75% from March, 2020 and daily average output of wire rod was 431,200 tons, up 59,600 tons or 16.0% from March, 2020, indicating the increased demand for construction steel owing to the production resumption.
Domestic steel products inventory continued to decrease. During the week ended May 15, 2020, five steel products inventory totaled 17.9576 million tons, down 6.47% from the previous week, which was the tenth consecutive week of decrease. Meanwhile, both social and mill inventories dropped, indicating the high demand and output
