China's steel capacity utilization rate lower than global average  

China's steel-making capacity utilization rate is now 75.8 percent, 2.4 percentage points lower than the global average level, said Xiong Bilin, an official with the Industrial Coordination Division under the National Development and Reform Commission. In the first 10 months, China produced a total of 472 million metric tons of crude steel, up 10.5 percent year on year. Meanwhile, global crude steel output was 982 million tons in the same period, down 13.5 percent from the same period of last year.


According to Xiong, China's steel industry possesses an aggregate capacity of 660 million tons, and still has 58 million tons of capacity in construction. If the large steel projects currently under construction start production, they may exert a negative impact on the steel industry's development. Xiong also revealed that the 70 domestic medium and large-sized steel companies turned from losses to gains starting from May. They achieved monthly profits of more than 10 billion yuan in July and August. In the first 10 months, their profits came to 37.58 billion yuan.


To relieve the overcapacity of the steel industry, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced on Thursday that it planned to eliminate 21.13 million tons of outdated iron-refining capacity and 16.91 million tons of steel-refining capacity.