OREANDA-NEWS. March 13, 2014. China Steel Corporation (CSC) held the domestic pricing meeting for 2014 April and May shipments and announced the following statement:

From the global economy perspective, Euro Zone’s economy recovers stably while European debt crisis has eased and investors’ confidences grow. European Central Bank will continue to release capitals to maintain the economic growth. Due to the abnormal weather, the industrial production and customers’ consumption slow down in the US, but the economic fundamental is still quite well, hence it won’t affect current path of expansion.

Though China is under economic reconstruction, and the growth of GDP would decelerate in the short-run, it also lowers the risk of hard landing. Benefit from the improvement of the global economy, Taiwan’s export and consumption are both in upward trend. The prosperity of economy leads the expansion in manufacturing industry. DGBAS revised 2014 GDP growth rate up to 2.82%. We expect the total performance would be better than last year.

While the market requires stimulus after the Chinese New Year, the bottom of iron ore and scrap prices appear and the international steel price remains steady. U.S. steel price is facing the moderation after a constant rise, but we expect the demand would be released when the weather gets better, and the steel price would rebound. The steel demand in Europe improves, and the mills would like to raise steel prices to reflect costs. Asian steel market is encouraged by strong domestic demand, both Japanese and Korean mills increase their prices. Steel prices in China remain stagnant due to the oversupply and high inventory. But Chinese mills keep or raise their prices, expecting the deferred demand will occur in the peak season of 2nd quarter.

With the global environment of politics and economies getting better, orders for home market and export grow continuously in the domestic downstream steel industries. Export and domestic prices remain steady. Given the uncertainty of current global economy still existing, in order to reflect the current market prices while maintaining the competitiveness of customers, CSC has decided to raise steel prices moderately except for Plates and ES by an average of 0.37% or NTD 78/MT.