Daily average output of crude steel remains high

According to the latest data from China Steel Association, the average daily output of crude steel in the country in late March is estimated to be 2.0719 million tons, up by 0.4% from the previous month, slightly lower than the historically high estimate of 2.0846 million tons in early March, and still at a high level.

Although Hebei Province introduced the environmental protection policy in late March, it seems that the impact on crude steel production is limited. On the one hand, downstream demand is gradually starting up, and steel companies are reluctant to reduce production significantly. On the other hand, only when the steel industry continues to suffer losses will the steel mills be forced to produce substantial reductions. The domestic steel companies are at the margin of margin and loss, which determines that the output of crude steel will not increase.

In March, China's manufacturing PMI was 50.9%, continuing to expand for six months, but the finished goods inventory index changed from shrinking to expanding. At the same time, the ex-factory prices of industrial producers in March decreased by 1.9% year-on-year, and the rate of decline has expanded. Both indicate that the industrial enterprises in the month are not in satisfactory demand and tend to be weaker in the warmer months. As the demand for downstream steel was lower than expected, and domestic crude steel production continued to climb, the steel society stocks and key steel companies repeatedly hit new highs. The data shows that at the end of March, the inventory of key steel enterprises was 1,37.56 million tons, an increase of 1.0559 million tons from the end of February.

In addition, the prices of raw materials such as iron ore and coke are still low, and their supporting effect on steel prices is also weakening. According to the latest monitoring, as of April 8th, the transaction price of our steel ore import mine was 976.4 yuan/ton, a decrease of 7.74% from the same period of last month; the comprehensive transaction price of my steel net steel was 3924.9 yuan/ton, which was a decrease of 2.41% from the same period of last month. . Iron ore port stocks continued to grow last week. The inventory of iron ore in 30 major ports across the country was 67.96 million tons, an increase of 40,000 tons from the previous week and an increase of 0.06% on a week-to-week basis.

However, in April, when supply pressure remained high, domestic steel stocks continued to decline, indicating that downstream demand was gradually released. According to the statistics of my steel network survey, as of April 5, 2013, the social inventory of the five major varieties of major cities nationwide was 21.6256 million tons, which was a decrease of 1.42% from the previous week, and it fell for three consecutive weeks. At the same time, the CPI rose 2.1% year-on-year in March, and inflationary pressures are not expected. The central bank is not expected to tighten monetary policy too much, and the current liquidity in the interbank market is still abundant. On the whole, the demand side of the steel market is improving, but the supply pressure has not slowed down. In the short term, the steel price is in a situation of consolidation and the rebound rate is limited.