[Ferro-Alloys.com]

  06 Forecast of World Steel Association: global steel demand will shrink by 2.4% in 2020

  On October 15, the world iron and Steel Association released the latest short-term global steel demand forecast for 2020 and 2021. Due to coronavirus pandemic, the global demand for steel will shrink by 2.4% to 17.25 billion tons in 2020, and the global demand for steel will recover to 17.95 billion tons in 2021, up 4.1% from the same period last year. China's steel demand is expected to grow by 8.0% in 2020.

  Al remeithi, chairman of the Market Research Committee of the world iron and Steel Association, said: "in April 2020, the global iron and steel industry has started to recover from the lowest point of steel demand, and has been showing a recovery trend since mid-May. However, due to the different industrial structure and different epidemic prevention and economic support measures, the recovery speed of global steel demand is not balanced. Among them, China's surprising resilience has led to a sharp increase in global steel demand growth in 2020. In the rest of the world, steel demand will continue to shrink sharply. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the development of some global trends, which are changing the steel and downstream industries. The long-term impact is far more than that of the short-term impact.

  Comments: Although the forecast results of the world steel association still show that the global steel demand will decline in 2020, the decline is far less than the previous expectation. This is closely related to China's strong recovery. However, in 2020, steel demand in both developed and developing economies will still shrink significantly, and it will not recover until 2021.

• [Editor:Catherine Ren]