Economic Information Daily citing a senior industry official as saying that China will renew its efforts to rein in overcapacity in its sprawling steel sector in the next five years.
The paper, run by state news agency Xinhua quoted an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as saying that China would focus on satisfying domestic steel demand over the 2011-2015 period.
While China draft five year plan for the sector was still under discussion, it already includes more plans to close down inefficient small scale producers and consolidate output in a number of very large scale steel enterprises.
China aims to put more than 60% of national steel capacity in the hands of its top 10 firms by the end of 2015 and big state owned firms like Baosteel and the Hebei Iron and Steel Group would be encouraged to increase annual capacity to 50 million tonnes to 60 million tonnes over the period.
China has long sought to strengthen the position of the big state-owned majors at the expense of thousands of small private mills, but flourishing demand has kept many of the minnows in business. While progress was made last year, the shift came largely as a result of one-off campaigns to meet energy efficiency targets which led to the temporary closure of hundreds of small mills.