OREANDA-NEWS. December 10, 2013. Euro zone economy has steadily grown, and shown a sign of bottom out and recovery in Q3, 2013. With inflation easing, the ECB cut interest rates to a new record low earlier this month to stimulate the economy.

After government budget impasse was temporarily solved last month,US economy has grown strongly. The Fed has announced that they will maintain monetary easing policy, until the inflation and unemployment target achieved. Sales of auto and real estate continue to increase.

China’s investment and export indicators have improved, government has stated in Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee about the economy policy to deepen the “market reform”, by pushing up the private consumption. Chinese economic outlook is promising, but the growth may slow down.

Benefited from the recovery in U.S. and Europe, Taiwan’s export orders has grown in past four months, it’s quite optimistic for the GDP growth in 2014.

On the other hand, steel demand in 4th Quarter was not as strong as usual, however, thanks to the global economic recovery, stable iron ore and scrap steel prices, US and EU mills already raised their offering price in Q1 2014, bringing an upward trend in the market. In Asia, Japanese domestic demand from construction and auto mobile industry remains strong, Japan mills have reduced steel export to supply domestic market. Chinese overcapacity issue is still a problem, but due to the low stock and high material cost, mills’ attempt to brace up the market may support the price in the future.

Order receiving by downstream industries in Taiwan remains slow, and since there’s still uncertainty in global economy, market has become conservative. To meet our customer’s needs and support downstream industry’s exporting competitiveness, CSC has decided to lower the domestic prices for January & February in 2014, except plate and ES, which are unchanged. The lowering rate is 0.75%, NTD156 per ton in average.