Beijing, February 4

China announced plans to cut steel production by as much as 150 million tonnes over the next five years, state media reported today, as the country stares down industrial overcapacity that has weighed on its growth.

The State Council, the country’s Cabinet, said it would close outdated plants and refuse to license new steel projects, the official Xinhua news service said.

Crude steel production declined 2.3 per cent year-on-year to 803.8 million tonnes in 2015, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month. Xinhua described it as the first drop since 1981.

China accounts for half the world’s crude steel production, according to data from the World Steel Association.

But the sector has been plagued by overcapacity in both China and the rest of the world for years, and global prices have plummeted in the face of oversupply.

Experts say China is sitting on an overproduction of 340 million tonnes. The current production capacity is 1.2 billion tonnes, but the country only produced 804 million tonnes last year, Xinhua said.