China will shut down 9.75 million metric tons of outdated iron and steel production capacity, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement late Thursday.
The ministry said that the government has been on a campaign to upgrade and consolidate its metals industry and wants the latest batch of closures done by the end of September.
The amount of iron and steel capacity to be cut amounts to about 1% of steelmaking capacity.
The government has been slowing its pace of capacity cuts, with this year's volume at around half of last year's target of 18.15 million tons and 59.16 million tons of capacity earmarked in 2011.
The China Iron and Steel Association has said recent rounds of capacity cuts are declining because of already massive reductions of around 195 million tons under China's 2006-2010 five-year economic plan.
The ministry also ordered 654,400 tonnes of outdated copper capacity and 260,000 tons of outdated galvanized aluminum capacity shut by the end of September.
Source - www.cnchemicals.com