In November this year, China produced 80.29 million mt of crude steel, down 1.5 percent or 1.23 million mt on month-on-month basis, as announced by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on December 16. The production restriction measures in November aimed at tackling smog contributed to the decline in output. At the same time, output in November increased by four percent year on year.
Finished steel production in China indicated a year-on-year rise of 10.4 percent to 104.02 million mt in November, 6.9 percentage points lower than the year-on-year increase in October.
In the January-November period of this year, China produced 904.18 million mt of crude steel and 1.1 billion mt of finished steel, rising by 7.0 percent and 10.0 percent respectively, both compared to the same period last year. The pace of increase in crude output was 0.4 percentage points lower compared to the first ten months of the year. However, annualized crude steel production came to around 986.4 million mt, still much higher than China’s crude steel output of 928 million mt in 2018.