OREANDA-NEWS. March 14, 2012. China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing announced that Chinaбпs Steel PMI stood at 42.8 in February, down from 47.9 in January when the logistics agent began releasing this index. This indicated the still weakening of the overall domestic steel market.

The good news is that the production index was falling, the new order index was steady and the new export order index was climbing. Both the procurement index and the raw material inventory index were below the critical point of 50 percent. The daily steel output has been maintaining less than 1.70 million tons for four months in a row.

The construction activity was expected to rally in March. There seemed to be little room for the steel prices to further go down after the consistent falls since the final quarter of last year. Consequently, this market is anticipated to be stabilizing in the near future pending the trend of downstream demand.