India’s per capita steel consumption may exceed 75kg is 2019 - Mr Sushim Banerjee
Mr Sushim Banerjee DG INSDAG in his personal capacity wrote in Financial Express that “While India needs to enhance its steel exports, meeting the domestic demand should be the basic determinant of capacity augmentation efforts. Recently, the World Steel Association has revised the October 2018 forecasts of country-wise steel consumption and these figures are being formally announced in April 2019 meeting. India has been projected to consume 96 million tonne of steel in 2018 which would rise up to 102.8 million tonne in the current year and would grow up to 110.2 million tonne in 2020. The latest steel demand estimates for India are not much of a revision of the earlier ones made in October 2018.”
Mr Banerjee wrote “Infrastructure growth would continue to remain India’s primary driver of demand for the commodity in the next few years. Slowdown in the pace of construction in roads, rail and Metro rail connectivity, dedicated freight corridors, industrial corridors, upgradation of existing major airports and the construction of minor ones, ports upgradation and mechanisation, shipbuilding, rural and urban infrastructure, real estate, etc, in the next few months would imply a hindrance to the projected demand volume of steel for a short period and then picking up the pace again. This feature has been a regular phenomenon in the economic growth of many countries. This only implies that the incremental consumption growth of 14 million tonnes of finished steel in the next two years may not follow a uniform pattern of growth. This may overshoot if the pace of construction is speeded up after the election process completes.
Mr Banerjee said “WSA report summarises a country-wise assessment of steel intensity of GDP arrived at by dividing the apparent steel usage volume by millions of real GDP in US dollar. According to this, India, with average 36.5 steel intensity, has to enhance consumption to reap the benefits of higher GDP growth in the coming years. Based on the estimated demand figures for 2019 and 2020, it has been estimated that per capita steel consumption in India is likely to exceed 75 kg by 2019. This is against the global average of 225 kg and Chinese figure of 594 kg.”
Source : Financial Express