Analysis and forecast of steel demand in the second half of 2022

As the international situation is volatile in 2022, under the impact of the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes again and again, the global demand for steel will decrease, the high price of bulk commodities will fall back, the domestic epidemic will also repeat, the global economic growth will slow down, and the steel industry will be greatly impacted. The specific performance is that the downstream demand will decrease, the price of raw materials will fluctuate continuously, and the operation of the supply chain will also be hindered. Since September, although the demand for steel has increased to a certain extent, the overall steel market in China is still in an unstable situation. In order to ensure the sustainable and stable development of China's economy, the state has also issued many relevant safeguard policies to meet this challenge, including increasing the quota of financial instruments of more than 300 billion yuan and making full use of the quota of local special bonds of more than 500 billion yuan. The state will continue to support the rapid growth of infrastructure investment. On the whole, with the introduction of relevant policies and the effective control of the epidemic situation, the demand for steel after the National Day will certainly increase. Next, I will specifically analyze the steel market demand from the following aspects.

1. In the first half of 2022, the cumulative growth rate of China's infrastructure investment was 7.1%. In addition, the investment lists of major projects in 2022 were released in many places, which clearly indicated that infrastructure construction would be accelerated. Therefore, the demand for steel in the construction machinery industry in the second half of the year is expected to grow.

2. Due to some real estate policies introduced last year, the real estate market has been impacted, which also affects the demand for steel in real estate. Although the demand for building materials improved in September after the introduction of policies such as "building protection and delivery", it still takes time for further recovery, so it is expected that the demand for steel in real estate will not be large this year.

3. With the substantial increase of the sales of new energy vehicles in China, the increase of national support for automobile consumption and the favorable export environment, the production and sales of automobiles are expected to increase by about 8% in the second half of the year, which will further increase the demand for steel.