China's steel industry profit surges 40 percent
February 18, Beijing. China's steel industry revenues hit a record high in 2018 as the industry continues to move forward with supply-side structural reforms, an ever-optimizing industry structure and market improvements, the China Daily reported on Monday.
In 2018, the main income of China's steel industry reached 7.65 trillion yuan, up 13.8% year-on-year, while profits rose 39.3% year on year to 470.4 billion yuan.
Revenues of large and medium-sized steel companies last year amounted to 4.13 trillion yuan, up 13.8% over the same period last year, and profits reached 286.3 billion yuan, an increase of 41.1% at profitability of 6.93%.
By the end of 2018, the asset-to-liability ratio for large and medium-sized steel producers in China stood at 65.02 percent, down 2 percentage points from a year earlier.
Last year, China's pig iron production rose 3 percent to 771 million tonnes, steel smelting increased 6.6 percent to 928 million tonnes, and finished steel output rose 8.5 percent to 1.11 billion tonnes.
Apparent consumption of rough steel reached an all-time high of 870 million tonnes in 2018, an increase of 14.8 percent over the previous year, with 98 percent of steel produced domestically.
Annual steel exports fell 8.1 percent to 69.34 million tonnes, a significant decline in 2018. But the value of steel exports reached 398.5 billion yuan, up 7.7 percent over the same period last year, and the average export price was 5,747 yuan per ton, 17.2 percent more than in 2017.
China's steel imports fell 1 percent from a year earlier to 13.17 million tonnes in 2018, with an import value of 108.3 billion yuan, 5.5 percent higher and the average price imports totaled 8.225 yuan per ton, up 6.5 percent.
Steel prices remained high in 2018. The composite steel price index averaged 115.8 last year, up 7.6 percent year on year.
The steel export trend is expected to stabilize in 2019, according to the Department of Raw Materials under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the PRC.