Situation on the world steel market: economic and statistical analysis

Task. Due to significant market changes in the steel industry in recent years, it is necessary to analyze the state and development of the global steel market. This article aims to analyze changes in the structure of global steel production and consumption, its exports and imports after the 2008 crisis, analyze the dynamics of raw material prices and compare it with the dynamics of the price indices of producers of sheet and strip rolled products, and build a forecast of world steel production for the first half of 2020. Model. The paper presents the results of the analysis of changes in the structure of world steel production and consumption, its exports and imports after the 2008 crisis. Given that 2009 was the year of the greatest decline in production, the assessment of changes in steel production of certain groups of countries and their place in the world steel production was made in comparison with this year. This comparison allowed us to see how much the world's countries have regained their positions after the financial crisis, and to assess the impact of the crisis on the qualitative change in the regional structure of steel producers. A seasonal model with a multiplicative range was used to model and forecast global steel production. The parabola model is used to describe the trend. Additionally, the residual component of the model was examined for adequacy. The accuracy of the forecast was estimated based on an average absolute percentage error. Conclusion. It was revealed that during the period from 2009 to 2018, a significant change in the position in the world ranking of steel producers was noted only in the CIS countries and China, the regional structure of consumption of steel production did not undergo qualitative changes, which characterizes its stability. CIS countries significantly reduced their share in world exports, while China, Africa and the Middle East significantly increased their share. In world imports significant changes have affected the countries of the Middle East and China. The consequences of the 2008 crisis resulted in a drop in the steel production capacity utilization rate to 70% in 2009 and 2015.the year of maximum capacity utilization was 2018 (81%). In the period from 2009 to 2015, there was an agreed change in the prices of coal and iron ore, and they had an equal impact on changes in producer prices for sheet and floor rolled products. There was no agreed change in coal and iron ore prices from 2016 to 2019. the prices of producers of sheet and strip products have become more determined by the dynamics of coal prices and less by the dynamics of iron ore prices. Practical importance. In accordance with the fulfilled forecast, we can expect that the volume of steel production in November and December 2019 will be 299.7 million tons. In the first half of 2020, 939.4 million tons of steel will be produced. We can expect a decline in production in February 2020 and the maximum volume of steel production in May 2020. Originality. Due to the fact that there are no such common trading instruments for steel products, such as for different grades of oil, for comparison purposes, prices for rolled steel were selected, as well as the cost of a basket of raw materials, which was determined as the weighted average price of the following elements: iron ore, coking coal, and ferrous scrap. The following raw material prices were used to calculate the basket value: the price of powdered iron ore (62% Fe, spot, CFR China), the price of solid coking coal (spot, FOB Australia), and the price of ferrous scrap (HMS1 scrap, FOB Rotterdam). Comparisons using this method allowed us to draw the following conclusions: a) the price of steel moves in parallel with the price of the main basket, b) regardless of the cost of the basket of raw materials, the absolute value of the producers ' margin remains virtually unchanged, as a result of which the margin level embedded in the price of steel is between 70 and 180% of the cost of the basket of raw materials.

steel, steel industry, world steel production, steel consumption, steel exports and imports, steel production capacity, world steel prices, iron ore, sheet metal, coal