Bucking the global trend of a consistent decline in steel production, India is the only country among major steel producing countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and the US which recorded a positive trend in steel production and consumption in 2015. The World Steel Association (WSA) report notified that India world’s third largest steel producer rose 2.6% in 2015 to 89.6 million tonne (MT), against 87.3 mt in 2014. Though world steel output went down 2.8% to 1.6 billion tone in the same year, reflecting a global economic slowdown. India became the third largest producer of steel in the world in January 2015, leaving behind the US as the fourth largest producer.
Globally, the report highlighted that crude steel output in China the world’s largest steel maker fell by 2.3 per cent to 803.8 mt in 2015 compared to the year-ago period. Japan produced 105.2 mt in 2015, down 5 per cent compared to 2014, while output in South Korea decreased by 2.6 per cent to 69.7 mt during the same period. Further, in 2015, the US produced 78.9 mt of crude steel, a decline of 10.5 per cent compared to 2014, whereas Russia showed a decrease of 4.3 per cent in 2015 with an output producing 101.5 mt of crude steel.
As per WSA data, the last decline in global steel output was witnessed in 2009, when production fell by 8 per cent to 1,238.8 mt from 1,343.4 mt in 2008. Since then it has continuously risen till 2014. Global steel production stood at 1,433.4 mt in 2010, 1,538 mt in 2011, 1,560.1 mt in 2012, 1,650.4 mt in 2013 and 1,670.2 mt in 2014.