China Steel PMI in March

According to the PMI data of the steel industry surveyed and released by the Iron and Steel Logistics Professional Committee of China IOT, China’s steel PMI was 47.9% in March, a decrease of 0.7 percentage points from the previous month. Among them, the production index was 51.3%, a decrease of 3.4% from the previous month; the new order index was 47.1%, an increase of 3.8 percentage points from the previous month; the new export order index was 43.7%, a decrease of 17.7 percentage points from the previous month. The finished product inventory index was 33.2%, a month-on-month decrease of 4.9%; the raw material inventory index was 36.6%, a month-on-month decrease of 9.8%. The sub-indices show that steel demand has rebounded, and steel mill production has declined due to environmental protection restrictions, which has driven raw material prices down, and corporate inventories have declined as a whole.