The above forecast results are obtained by the Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute using the Steel Consumption Coefficient Method and the Downstream Industry Consumption Method, with the results of both methods being weighted. The Institute has released steel demand forecasts for 11 consecutive years, and over the years, the predicted values have matched the actual figures well.

At the "2020 China and Global Steel Demand Forecast Research Results and Steel Enterprise Competitiveness Rating" release held that day, President Li Xinchuang of the Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute pointed out that in 2019, both global economic growth and international trade expanded at a slower pace. China promptly implemented a series of countercyclical adjustment policies, effectively mitigating the downward economic pressure and maintaining overall stable economic operation. Benefiting from the stable and growing domestic economy, China's major downstream industries such as construction, machinery, energy, and home appliances have seen a good growth trend in steel consumption, promoting a faster overall increase in China's steel consumption.

Specifically, in 2019, the main reasons for the significant increase in steel consumption in our country were threefold:

Infrastructure investment growth has been relatively fast. From January to October 2019, infrastructure investment increased by 4.2% year-on-year.Precision TubeYear-on-year, it accelerated by 0.4 percentage points from the whole of 2018. Among them, the investment in railway transportation grew by 5.9%, while that in road transportation increased by 8.1%.

Real estate development exceeded expectations. From January to October 2019, the national real estate development investment reached 10.96 trillion yuan, up 10.3% year-on-year, accelerating by 0.8 percentage points compared to the whole year of 2018. Residential investment was 8.07 trillion yuan, growing by 14.6%, accelerating by 1.2 percentage points from the previous year. The construction area of residential buildings by real estate developers was 8.55 billion square meters, up 9.0% year-on-year. The newly started construction area was 186 million square meters, up 10.0%.