India May steel output growth rate slips below global average

Bucking the trend, India's steel production growth rate in May at just 1.5% slipped below the global average of 2.6%.

India's steel output stood at 6.73 million tonnes during the month against 6.63 million tonnes a year earlier, industry body World Steel Association (WSA) said today.

In contrast, global production increased to 136 million tonnes in May 2013 compared to 132.8 million tonnes produced in the same month last year.

In April this year also, India's production growth rate was higher at 3.5% compared to world's average of 1.2%.

In fact, India's growth rate is better in first months of the current year than the world's average. Steel production in India grew by three% in India to 33.258 million tonnes between January and May compared to world's average of 2.1% to 658 million tonnes, WSA said.

Meanwhile, in May this year, China's production was up by 7.3% at 67 million tonnes and Japan's output grew by 4.3% to 9.6 million tonnes.

However, it fell by 7.1% in South Korea to 5.5 million tonnes.

Among the European Union nations, production dipped in Germany by 1.5%, Italy (11.1%) and France (by 3.5%). It also declined in Turkey by 2% to three million tonnes.

Recording just a slight increase, Russia produced 6.1 million tonnes. The US produced 7.5 million tonnes of steel in May 2013, down by 4.9%. Brazil produced three million tonnes of steel, up 5.5%.

"The crude steel capacity utilisation ratio remained nearly unchanged at 79.6% compared to 80% in April 2013," WSA said.