BEIJING (Reuters) - An official from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Saturday steel capacity will fall an estimated 1.13 bln tonnes by 2020, "including some dead capacity".
Luo Tiejun, vice head of the ministry's raw material department, said at a conference in Beijing that China could not further scale up exports to solve overcapacity, predicting that crude steel production would remain at 800 million tonnes, assuming exports remain at 100 million tonnes.
He added that he expected domestic steel consumption to remain between 630 million and 700 million tonnes in the coming five years.
(Reporting by David Stanway; Writing by Pete Sweeney)