Global steel demand is expected to grow by 0.5 per cent year on year to reach 1.51 billion tonnes in 2017, the World Steel Association told its conference in Dubai on Tuesday.
This year global steel demand will grow by 0.2 per cent to 1.501 billion tonnes, it added.
In its April forecast, the organisation said global steel use would fall by 0.8 per cent in 2016 to 1.488 billion tonnes.
The organisation said a better outlook for demand in China and Russia had lifted its forecasts.
“The shrink in Chinese demand has now been forecast at only one percent,” said TV Narendran, chairman of the worldsteel economics committee and Tata Steel managing director for India and Southeast Asia.
Chinese demand had been forecast in April to fall by 4 per cent this year but the association said on Tuesday that Chinese demand would fall by only 1 per cent to 665.6 million tonnes and by 2 per cent in 2017 to 652.3 million tonnes.
China produces and consumes about half the world's steel. It imports some two thirds of the world's seaborn iron ore.
Narendran said Russia had also performed better than expected, contributing to the revision of the forecast.
The association forecast demand would fall by 1.6 per cent this year to 49.6 million tonnes in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a group of former Soviet Union countries, and would grow by 2.1 per cent to 50.7 million tonnes year on year in 2017.
Faced with anger around the world over a flood of cheap Chinese steel products, Beijing pledged to cut steel capacity by 45 million tonnes this year, and had achieved 47 per cent of this target by the end of July.
Despite the cuts, China's crude steel production rose for a sixth straight month in August, while its exports of the alloy are on track to beat last year's record 112 million tonnes.
Source: Hindu Busines Line