Brazil's steel distributors association, Inda, has disclosed that its members' steel sales rose 21.7 percent year on year to around 251,000 tons in January.
Distributors' stocks stood at around 627,000 tons at the end of January, up 33.1 percent from a year earlier.
Inda's distributors purchased around 207,000 tons of steel from steel producers in January, an increase of 27.8 percent from a year earlier.