According to China National Development and Reform Commission, in April this year China overall output of crude steel increased by 2.6% YoY, with the growth rate down 4.5 percentage points as compared with April 2011. In the same month, China finished steel output increased by 7.9% YoY, with the growth rate down 0.4 percentage points YoY.

The domestic outputs of coke and ferroalloy increased by 7.3% YoY and 11.9% YoY, but with drops in growth rate of 4.5 percentage points and 5.6 percentage points YoY, respectively. In April, China's exports of finished steel totaled 4.67 million tonnes, down 360,000 tonnes MoM, while imports of finished steel totaled 1.13 million tonnes, down by 140,000 tonnes MoM.

In January to April, China's output of crude steel totaled 233.99 million tonnes, up by 1.9% YoY, with the increase rate down 6.4 percentage points YoY. The output of finished steel in the first four months totaled 302.45 million tonnes, up by 6.2% YoY, but down 6.4 percentage points in terms of growth rate. Domestic coke output for the period totaled 144.55 million tonnes, up by 6.4% YoY, with a drop of 5.6 percentage points in the increase rate.

China output of ferroalloy in the given period totaled 9.21 million tonnes, up by 10.9% YoY, with the growth rate down 7.8 percentage points YoY. Meanwhile, in the first four months, China exported 16.81 million tonnes of finished steel, up by 10.2% YoY. On the other hand, it imported 130,000 tonnes of steel billet and 4.54 million tonnes of finished steel, down by 39.8% YoY and 18.3% YoY.