TEHRAN (Iran News) – The year-on-year growth witnessed in Iran’s raw steel production in January 2020 was more than 22 times higher than the global average rate in the same period, a report by the World Steel Association (WSA) said.
According to the WSA report in January, Iran’s raw steel output witnessed a 46.7 percent growth compared to the figure for the same time span in 2019, whereas the global average production of the item grew by only 2.1 percent year-on-year, IRNA reported.
In January 2020, Iran produced 2.89 million tons of raw steel, indicating a 924,000-ton increase compared to the figure for the same period last year, which was 1.97 million tons.
This comes as raw steel production by 64 countries in the same month stood at 154.43 million tons, showing a rise of 3.2 million tons compared to the figure for January 2019, which amounted to 151.22 million tons.
In January 2020, the world’s top five steel producers were China (84.26 million tons), India (9.22 million tons), Japan (8.22 million tons), the US (7.7 million tons) and Russia (six million tons) respectively.
According to figures by the Iranian Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, the country produced over 20 million tons of raw steel during the first 10 months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2019-January 21, 2020), up by 6.8 percent year-on-year.
In the same duration last year, Iran’s raw steel output stood at 18.73 million tons.
In addition, Iran’s production of steel products reached 17.58 million tons during March 21, 2019-January 21, 2020, showing an increase of 9.3 percent compared to the figure for the same time span a year ago, which amounted to 16.09 million tons.
During the same 10-month period to January 21, Iran exported 8.8 million tons of steel ingots and products, with overseas sales of steel ingots accounting for more than 66 percent of the total figure.
Figures by the Iranian Steel Producers Association (ISPA) shows that in this period, 5.82 million tons of steel ingots and 2.98 million tons of steel products were exported.
During the same 10-month time span a year ago, Iran had destined 3.97 million tons of steel ingots to foreign markets, which was 47 percent less than the country’s exports during March 21, 2019-January 21, 2020.
- source : Iran Daily, Irannews
