According to the coke and steel forum held in Yinchuan Ningxia Province on October 22, experts said Chinese steel market is still spacious in the period of Twelfth Five-Year Plan.
"China is within the age of industrialization, thus the infrastructure construction tasks are still colossal and the steel consumptions in this sector will account for roughly 65% of the overall steel products. According to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, Chinese GDP growth will remain at 8% and the urbanization will also reach 48% from 43%. In this context, the domestic steel demand is optimistic. It is expected that China's steel output will peak at 800 million t and the heyday period will last 5 to 8 years.' An engineer from The Chinese Society for Metals said.
For this year, Chinese steel consumption will surge by 7.5% year over year to 643.2 million t and it will reach 680.6 million t in next year. However, China should be prudent about the market prospect given to the reduction of the downstream demand from mechanical industry and slowdown of the rail transportation investment.