Chinese iron ore demand will exceed 1.1 billion tons next year

The heavy dependence of iron ore on imports has always been one of the fundamental problems that have plagued the development of China’s steel industry. The Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute expects that in 2012, China's consumption of iron ore product ore will be approximately 1.067 billion tons, an increase of 4.6% year-on-year; in 2013, the demand for iron ore product ore will reach 1.11 billion tons, an increase of 4.0% year-on-year. The proportion of imported iron ore demand will remain above 60%, and this trend will not be changed in the short term.

Li Xinchuang, director of the Planning and Research Institute of the Metallurgical Industry, said that the current domestic mines are still facing the pressure of overtaxing their taxes. “The domestic iron ore companies’ tax burden is more than 25%, which exceeds the levels of other industries and the taxes of foreign mines The negative is usually less than 10%."

Excessive tax burdens, while raising domestic ore costs, have indirectly pushed up international ore prices. "From 2003 to 2011, just because of the increase in iron ore prices, domestic steel companies have spent more than 300 billion US dollars." Li Xinchuang such an account. He said that if domestic enterprises are not actively "going out", when India, the Middle East, Africa and other countries increase steel development, and the protectionism of the country where the resources are located has risen, the constraints of iron ore imports will be even greater in the future. It is necessary to increase the effective supply of overseas iron ore.

Li Xincang frankly stated: “In fact, if 700 million tons of iron ore is imported, overseas equity mines should account for more than 300 million tons, so as to solve the problem of the effective supply of overseas iron ore.”

However, at present, the proportion of imported iron ore from China is less than 10%. Driven by the large-scale construction of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”, the new production capacity of the rights and minerals capacity in 2015 is expected to reach 200 million tons, and the output is expected to reach 100 million tons.

“The period of overseas iron ore construction is relatively long. From early preparation to construction and then to production, it will take ten years at the fastest.” Li Xinchuang pointed out that overseas mining is not only the construction of the mine itself, but also includes a series of supporting constructions such as ports and railways. , is a complicated project. In addition, it also faces political, cultural, environmental and technological risks.