The all-purpose commodity markets such as the steel materials for construction fell in March-May in China, but some of them rallied. The supply of high-level steel sheets was under shortage and the prices for the Japanese customers rose, and it is expected that such trends will continue for a while.

Not only in China but also in Southeast Asia, is there industrial production of their high levels, and steel materials' demand is brisk.

Steel sheets' supply and demand in the Asian markets is tight excluding the commodities such as colored steel sheet. Especially, the supply of high-level steel sheets for cars and electric machines has been limited to blast furnace steel makers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. There is the situation in which the delivery date is adjusted about the increasing requests.

Each blast furnace maker in Japan has the situation in which it cannot help controlling export to correspond to the domestic demand that recovers rapidly. On the other hand, they are announcing the raise of the overseas price in the period of July-September in the background of the rise of raw material cost, and The export prices seem to continue to rise after July.

In addition, the average export price of all steel rose by about $200 from 2002 to $660.