In March this year, steel product orders, including specialty steels, booked by domestic sectors in Japan amounted to 4.81 million metric tons, up 3.2 percent compared to February and rising by 1.9 percent year on year, according to the data released by the Japan Iron and Steel Association (JISF). Meanwhile, in the first quarter of this year, domestic steel product orders in Japan increased by 1.5 percent year on year to 14.08 million metric tons.
In March, ordinary steel product orders in Japan booked by the domestic construction sector decreased by 2.5 percent to 1.04 million metric tons, while steel product orders including special steel orders booked by the Japanese automotive sector amounted to 1.11 million metric tons, up 3.5 percent, both on year-on-year basis. Japan's shipbuilding industry booked 277,710 metric tons of ordinary steel products in the given month, up 17.3 percent compared to the same month of 2017.