India is now 5th largest global steel producer

India has moved up two places in global ranking and is now the fifth largest producer of crude steel in the world with the revised figures for production in 2006 ahead of South Korea and Germany.

An expert committee set up by the union ministry of steel, which went into the issue of under-reporting of capacity and production data, has revised the production figures for crude steel in calendar year 2006 to 49.45 million tonne as against the earlier reported 44 million tonne, which put India in the seventh position among global steel producers.

The revised figures for crude steel production in 2006-07 is pegged at 50.71 million tonne and that of finished steel at 51.90 million tonne.

According to figures released by the International and Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) for 2006 released in January, South Korea ranked fifth with a crude steel capacity of 48.4 million tonne and Germany sixth with 47.2 million tonne. With the revised figures, India has pipped both South Korea and Germany.

Lower estimates of induction furnace and re-rolling sectors accounted for most of the under-reporting of crude steel data, which in turn affected semi-finished and re-rolling (long product) figures.

Consumption figures have also been revised. The revised data series for the last five years for consumption after adjustment due to double counting for finished steel (alloy and non-alloy) shows that during 2006-07, domestic steel consumption stood at 46.14 million tonne as compared to 41.43 million tonnes in 2005-06.