PETALING JAYA: Steel stocks on Bursa Malaysia continued their steady climb yesterday on improving prospects, following China’s stringent move to slash its output and clamp down on more illegal steel mills. According to Malaysian Iron and Steel Industry Federation president Datuk Soh Thian Lai, the current uptrend in steel prices was mainly triggered by the China factor. He is also maintaining a “buy” call on the sector on the premise that the average steel price is trading at RM2,350 per tonne. Mills in the world’s largest steelmaker churned out 74.59 million tonnes of the construction material in August, up 8.7% from a year earlier and just beating July’s previous monthly record of 74.02 million tonnes. China’s stockpiles of rebar, a construction steel product, rose to 3.88 million tonnes by the end of August.

Source: The Star September 14, 2017 20:37 UTC