Future trends in Japanese steel consumption

This paper uses an intensity of use model to forecast crude steel consumption in Japan over the period 1997-2005. Six steel consuming industries are identified; machinery, electrical machinery and equipment, transport equipment, other manufacturing, construction, and fabricated metal products. The model decomposes changes in steel consumption for each industry into three components: (i) changes in the steel intensity of production in each steel consuming industry, (ii) changes in the size of these industries relative to aggregate domestic production and (iii) the rate of growth in GDP. Forecasts of these separate components for the six steel consuming industries are then used to forecast aggregate steel consumption. The results suggest that crude steel consumption in Japan will fall from 82.1 million tonnes in 1997 to around 73.1 million tonnes in 2005. The cause of this reduction in consumption is cyclically low GDP growth and further permanent reductions in the steel intensity of Japanese production over the forecast period. An interesting finding of this paper is that cyclical increases in investment expenditure in Japan appear to lead to significant rises in the steel intensity of domestic production, and hence steel consumption. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.