World Steel Association: It is predicted that global steel demand will increase by 4.5% this year to 1.855 billion tons

On the 14th, the World Steel Association released the results of short-term steel demand forecasts for 2021 and 2022. The World Steel Association predicts that global steel demand will continue to grow by 4.5% in 2021 after increasing by 0.1% in 2020, reaching 1,855.4 million tons. In 2022, global steel demand will continue to grow by 2.2%, reaching 1.8964 billion tons. This forecast believes that with the acceleration of global vaccination, the spread of new coronavirus variants will no longer cause damage and chaos like previous waves of epidemics.

Al Remeithi, Chairman of the World Steel Association’s Market Research Committee, commented on the results of this forecast: “In 2021, the recovery of global steel demand exceeds expectations, which has caused us to revise up our overall forecasts except for China. Due to the strong recovery, in addition to Outside of China, global steel demand will return to pre-epidemic levels ahead of schedule this year.

   The previously suppressed demand release has strongly supported manufacturing activities, which is the main reason for the recovery of steel demand. The performance of developed economies has exceeded our previous expectations and significantly exceeded that of developing economies, which reflects the positive effects of high vaccine coverage and government support measures. In developing economies, the recovery momentum has been interrupted due to the repeated occurrence of epidemics.

   Although in the face of recent waves of the epidemic, the recovery of the manufacturing industry has shown greater resilience than expected, but due to supply-side constraints, the recovery in the second half of this year will slow down, and the strong recovery throughout 2021 will also be suppressed. Nevertheless, due to the large backlog of orders, the rebuilding of inventories and the continuous advancement of vaccination in developing countries, we expect steel demand to continue to recover in 2022.

   High inflation, the continued slowness of vaccination in developing countries, and the further deceleration of China's economic growth will all affect the results of this forecast.