He said a lot of construction projects were stopped by financial squeeze of Chinese government earlier the year. He added the halted projects were limited in some industries including steel, aluminium, real estate, hotel, golf course, development area and road and he expects the situation wouldn�ft become worse.

He said the government also tried to slow construction of residential houses by squeezing mortgage lone for individuals. The government doesn�ft permit loan for general condominium buildings while it permits loan for who has to move to suburb.

Although the government announced the new building starts is 10 million square meters in 2004, he said the number is above that. He said the government uses 2 trillion yuan for infrastructure in the year and Shanghai uses 200-250 billion yuan every year.

He said steel structural building demand could increase to 20-30 million tonnes a year. He expects steel structural building should increase though almost all plants have steel structure while most of all residential buildings have concrete structure with reinforcing steel. He said the limited space requires steel structure along with the needed design when the government enforces steel structural residential buildings. Around 30% of higher cost for steel structure limits the prevailing comparing concrete structure.

The steel structural building uses mainly plate and sheet steel with small amount of stainless steel, H-beam, angle and I-beam. Most of all the steel is made in China. Foreign transplants use imported steel to meet specification of the design but now many plants with Chinese design uses domestic steel.

He said imported steel has no competitiveness in the country even when Chinese H-beam price increased to more than 60,000 yen per tonne from less than 40,000 yen in a couple of years ago.