In order to consolidate the achievements in production capacity elimination in the domestic steel industry, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have jointly issued a notice to urge local governments and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) to investigate and verify the equipment capacities and capacity changes at steel enterprises in the past three years.
Accordingly, steel enterprises will have to give information relating to their steel capacities, outputs and fixed-asset investments. Steel enterprises which have made changes to capacity since 2016, those which have recorded increases of more than 10 percent in outputs in the January-September period of 2019 and those whose annualized capacity utilization rates in the January-September period of 2019 exceeded 100 percent will have to provide detailed analysis and explanations to local governments and the SASAC.
The local governments and the SASAC are required to submit the results of their investigations by November 29 of this year.
China has eliminated more than 150 million mt of steel capacity over the past three years as part of environmental protection and management and supply-side reforms. However, China’s crude steel output amounted to 829.22 million mt in the January-October period this year, up 7.4 percent year on year.