São Paulo – Raw steel production slid by 1.4% in Brazil year-on-year in H1. Industry association Instituto Aço Brasil reported 17.2 million tons produced.
Domestic sales were up 1.3% to 9.2 million tons. Exports were down 2.4% to 6.7 million tons, with revenue sliding 5.9% to USD 4 billion.
“I’d say it was a very bad first half, and expectations weren’t met,” Instituto Aço Brasil president Marco Polo Lopes said. According to him, steel production follows the economy, whose growth also fell short of earlier predictions.
Since the economy is sluggish, Lopes said the industry is turning to exports. “There’s a great need to export. Brazil’s steel industry is exporting about 40% of its output. That’s a lot, and it’s a result of a domestic market slump,” he said.
Forecasts
This scenario prompted the institute to revise its forecasts. As the year began, raw steel output was expected to be up 2.2% this year. The new projection is for a 0.4% increment, to 35.5 million tons. “It’s much less than we were expecting before, as a consequence of H1 performance,” argued Lopes.
The forecast regarding domestic sales was slashed by almost half, from 4.1% to 2.5%, which means 19.4 million tons sold. Exports, which were formerly expected to be down 6.1% this year, are now seen going down 7.3% in volume and 12.4% in value, to USD 7.7 billion.
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
