Global steel crisis offers opportunities for efficent mills

One, steel demand in the country will take time to recover, a couple of years, say, and the global outlook is pathetically pessimistic. There is a growing concern that steel production in the world will get back to an average annual growth rate of anything between 1.5-2%, experienced through the seventies till the end of the nineties, and in the face of a global excess capacity of nearly 3-4 hundred million tonne of crude steel, the merit of investing in steel is questionable. It will take years and years to clear off the excess supply conditions and hence, at low pricing conditions, the profitability will remain under huge pressure.

Two, alternatively, there are reasons to brush off such negativism in the extreme and think of the new conditions of development in the developing nations which will bring investments back on track and steel demand will start moving up once again after a temporary halt. Savings from the incomes of the people of the world, corporate and the governments will have to be re-allocated to investments in new areas, and more importantly, where it is needed the most. The world may not require more factories to manufacture goods for consumption immediately. But, infrastructure for industrial development and to move people around and housing are still

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