Overseas steel demand has been restrained to a certain extent

Overseas steel demand has been restrained to a certain extent. The world's major countries have reduced liquidity supply and raised interest rates, and due to the impact of the severe epidemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, global economic growth and steel demand are bound to be suppressed to a certain extent. Not long ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released the "World Economic Outlook", predicting that the real growth rate of the global economy in 2022 will be 4.4%, down 0.5 percentage points from the forecast in October last year. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development lowered its forecast for global economic growth in 2022 to 2.6% from 3.6%. The decline in macroeconomic growth will of course lead to a decline in the growth rate of total steel demand. The decline in the growth rate of total overseas steel demand is bound to restrain China's steel exports, mainly direct exports.

Domestic steel demand has grown steadily. The global economic growth in 2022 is facing great uncertainty, which in turn will create a lot of downward pressure on China's economic growth. To this end, policy-making departments have made vigorous counter-cyclical adjustments, including a trend toward looser monetary policy. It is estimated that the "RRR cut" by the People's Bank of China will release 530 billion yuan of long-term liquidity to support the expansion of demand. It is expected that in the next stage of the country's infrastructure construction, real estate investment and industrial production, a relatively sufficient supply of funds will be obtained, and the cost of capital use will also be reduced. And because the demand for steel is in the transition from weak to prosperous, there will be more release in the second quarter, especially in the second half of the year, and the national steel demand will show a steady growth trend.