For instance, although steel products have continuously encountered difficulties because of trade protectionism lawsuits, production of raw iron and steel still strongly soared in the first quarter of this year. In March alone, production of raw iron and steel exceeded 1.68 million tons, up 56 percent over the same period last year.
As for export, iron and steel exports hit 1.7 million tons, worth US$1.1 billion, in the first quarter of this year, up 24.2 percent in volume and 9.3 percent in value over the same period last year. Steel industry is expected to have good growth prospect in the near future as the construction of several steel plants will be completed, sending the growth of steel industry this year to about 10 percent higher than previous year.
However, steel industry also has to face with a few difficulties caused by trade protectionism tendency, dependence on global material price and power price hike. According to calculation of the Vietnam Steel Association, with an increase of 8.36 percent in electricity prices, the price of steel will possibly climb around VND100,000 per ton.
Similarly, production of cement for export reached 8.55 million tons in the first quarter of this year, worth $364.5 million, up 0.9 percent in volume and 23.3 percent in value compared to the same period last year.
The Ministry will review and supplement the list of building materials that can be produced domestically in order to limit imports of them and timely resolve entanglements about minerals for production of building materials and cement.
