In its annual springtime demand outlook, worldsteel said it sees early signs of global steel demand settling in a growth trajectory in 2024 and 2025.

“The global economy continues to show resilience despite facing several strong headwinds, the lingering impact from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, high inflation, high costs and falling household purchasing power, rising geopolitical uncertainties, and forceful monetary tightening,” worldsteel said. 

“As we approach the end of this monetary tightening cycle, we observed that tighter credit conditions and higher costs have led to a sharp slowdown in housing activity in most major markets, and have hampered the manufacturing sector globally. While it seems the world economy will experience a soft landing from this monetary tightening cycle, we expect to see global steel demand growth remaining weak and market volatility remaining high on lagged impact of monetary tightening, high costs and high geopolitical uncertainties.”

worldsteel said it believes India will lead the way in steel demand growth, forecasting an 8% increase in demand over 2024 and 2025. China, meanwhile, is expected to take a back seat, it said. 

“We expect that steel demand in China in 2024 will remain around the level of 2023, as real estate investments continue to decline, but the corresponding steel demand loss will be offset by growth in steel demand coming from infrastructure investments and manufacturing sectors. In 2025 we see China steel demand returning to downtrend with a 1% decline,” it said. 

“This projection suggests that by 2025 China’s steel demand will be significantly lower than the recent peak demand year, 2020. This projection is also in line with our view that China might have reached its peak steel demand, and the country’s steel demand is likely to continue to decline in the medium term, as China gradually moves away from a real estate and infrastructure investment dependent economic development model.”