Commodity Market Report
China coal short-term outlook March 2020: coronavirus takes toll on economy
Report summary
The coronavirus outbreak significantly impacted China’s economy in the first two months of the year. Key indicators, including industrial production, fixed asset investment, total retail sales of consumer goods as well as exports, dropped around 20% year-on-year. The government has been implementing various measures to revive economic activity since the extended Chinese new year holiday, from which the investment sector will fare better than the consumer and import-export sectors. We expect coal demand in the latter two sectors will remain weak in the near term. Both thermal and metallurgical coal prices fell in response to weak demand in March and we expect the downward trend to persist in April. Read our report for more details.
Table of contents
- Reduced demand pressures thermal coal price
- Series of coke price cuts triggers coking coal price collapse
- Coronavirus harms economy and thermal coal demand
- Slow recovery of steel-consuming industries curtails coking coal prices
- Domestic supply returns to normal
Tables and charts
This report includes 10 images and tables including:
- Key thermal coal prices: history and forecast (US$/t)
- Hard coking coal price arbitrage at Tangshan steel mill, US$/t nominal
- Monthly coal-fired power generation, TWh
- Monthly hydro-power generation, TWh
- Monthly throughput at Qinhuangdao port, Mt
- Monthly throughput at Huanghua port, Mt
- Monthly hot metal production, Mt
- Monthly metallurgical coke production, Mt
- Thermal coal supply, Mt
- Metallurgical coal supply, Mt
What's included
This report contains:
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