In May this year, steel product orders, including specialty steels, booked by domestic sectors in Japan amounted to 4.43 million metric tons, down 3.4 percent compared to April and rising by 1.3 percent year on year, according to the data released by the Japan Iron and Steel Association (JISF). Meanwhile, in the January-May period of the current year, domestic steel product orders in Japan remained stable year on year at 22.4 million metric tons.
In May, ordinary steel product orders in Japan booked by the domestic construction sector increased by 4.3 percent to 942,599 metric tons, while steel product orders including special steel orders booked by the Japanese automotive sector amounted to 1.0 million metric tons, down 2.2 percent, both on year-on-year basis. Japan's shipbuilding industry booked 322,442 metric tons of ordinary steel products in the given month, up 1.7 percent compared to the same month of 2015.