Japan Steel Export Decreased in 2005

The Japan Iron and Steel Federation announced the figures of steel import and export in 2005 on Thursday. According to that, the volume of steel export from Japan in 2005 decreased by 7.6 % from 2004 to 32,605,000 tonnes and it decreased for the first time in two years. The amount of money of steel export increased by 18.5% to US$ 29,633 million and it updated the highest ever for three consecutive years. The export volume of steel products had decreased by 13.6% to 23,039.000 tonnes. That of steel plate had increased by 7.1 %. However, hot coil, cold coil and zinc coated steel sheet had decreased by more than 10 %. The export for Korea had decreased by 13.6 to 7,738,000 tonnes and it had increased for three consecutive years. The export for China had decreased by 16.1% to 5,783,000 tonnes, for Thailand had increased by 6.1% to 4,099,000 tonnes, for Taiwan had increased by 11.4 % to 3,605,000 tonnes and for U.S. had increased by 1.6% to 1,451,000 tonnes. The export of ordinary steel products in December had decreased by 17.7% from the same month in 2004 to 1,828,000 tonnes and it had decreased for thirteen consecutive months. That of hot coil had decreased by 33.7% to 409,000 tonnes, that of cold coil had decreased by 25.8 % to 220,000 tonnes.