Vietnam’s steel industry set to grow over 20 percent in 2018

Hanoi (VNA) – The steel industry is forecast to grow by 20-22 percent in 2018, said Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Steel Association (VSA) Nguyen Van Sua.

Strongest growth will be seen in the production of hot rolled steel with 154 percent, followed by welded steel pipe (15 percent), coloured galvanished steel (12 percent), construction steel (10 percent), and cold rolled steel (5 percent).

A line-up of projects will be put into operation in 2018 like Hoa Phat Group’s steel project in Quang Ngai province with capacity of 2 million tonnes per year, Hoa Sen Group’s cold rolled steel production line in Binh Dinh province with capacity of 350,000 tonnes per year and three construction steel projects of Pomina, Vietnam-Italia and Tung Ho companies which can produce over 1.8 million tonnes a year.

Therefore, volumes of steel products will shoot up in the year. Production of iron is expected to rise 75 percent against 2017 to 7,500 tonnes while that of steel billet will soar 14 percent to 14,000 tonnes.

To back the industry’s development, the VSA will proactively join in building national technical standards for steel products, and devising trade defence measures to protect the domestic steel industry in the context of deep global integration, Sua said. Also, the association will keep a close watch on the developments of foreign petitions and join hands with local steel firms and state agencies to chalk out ways to carry out effective solutions to mitigate damages.

Nghiem Xuan Da, Chairman of the Vietnam Steel Corporation (VNSteel) said that the local steel sector has seen strong growth in capacity, output and demand. He laid stress on the State’s role in mapping out the master development plan for the sector, attracting investment and building policies to promote international cooperation. Meanwhile, it is crucial to branch out construction, shipbuilding, automobiles and engineering as those steel consuming sectors will drive growth of the steel industry in the coming time, he noted.

Report from the VSA showed that over 22 million tonnes of steel were produced in 2017, up 23.5 percent from the previous year.

The country earned 3.64 billion USD from exporting 5.5 million tonnes of steel products, up 45.4 percent in value and 28.5 percent in value. Meanwhile, it spent 10.5 billion USD purchasing nearly 20 million tonnes of steel from foreign countries, which reflected a rise of 13.2 percent in value and a decrease of 14.2 percent in the amount made in 2016.-VNA