In March this year, steel product orders, including specialty steels, booked by domestic sectors in Japan amounted to 4.6 million metric tons, up 5.4 percent compared to February and rising by 3.4 percent year on year, according to the data released by the Japan Iron and Steel Association (JISF). Meanwhile, in the January-March period of the current year, domestic steel product orders in Japan decreased by 0.9 percent year on year to 13.4 million metric tons.
In March, ordinary steel product orders in Japan booked by the domestic construction sector increased by seven percent to 1.03 million metric tons, while steel product including special steel orders booked by the Japanese automotive sector amounted to 988,688 metric tons, up 2.3 percent, both on year-on-year basis. Japan's shipbuilding industry booked 338,467 metric tons of ordinary steel products in the given month, up 4.3 percent compared to the same month of 2015.