World steel production increased by 9,6% year-on-year last month to 114,8-million tons, and is now only 2,1% below pre-economic crisis levels, the World Steel Association reported on Friday.

The association said that while most Asian and Middle Eastern countries actually showed higher production numbers than before the impact of the crisis was felt, the US, Japan and producing countries in EU and Africa were still not back to pre-crisis production levels.

Asian giant China's crude steel production for July 2010 was 51,7-million tons, an increase of 2,2% compared with July 2009 and interestingly almost 15% up from pre-crises levels, which confirmed that even with slightly lower production numbers, the world's fastest growing economy still dominated the market.

Last month, China produced 45% of the world's steel output.

Elsewhere in Asia, Japan produced 9,2-million tons of crude steel in July 2010, which was a strong improvement of 20,4% compared with the same month last year, but still 9,5% down from 2008 production.

South Korea's steel production for July 2010 was 4,8-million tons, which equalled a 16,2% improvement in production, compared with the same month last year and a 2,4% improvement on 2008 levels.

In the EU, Germany increased its steel production by 30% to 3,5-million tons, when compared with last year's output, but production was still 7,7% lower than that of July 2008. The UK was also only able to produce 831 000 t of crude steel, a drop of 6% compared with last year, and 34,5% lower than in 2008.

Russia produced 5,6-million tons of crude steel in July, an 11,5% increase over the same month last year and Ukraine's crude steel production for July 2010 was 2,4-million tons, which was a drop of 9,6% compared to July 2009.

The US expanded its production by almost one third in July to 6,7-million tons when compared with July 2009, but output was 21,3% lower than in 2008.

Meanwhile, Africa's biggest steel producer, South Africa, was still down with 16,6% from pre-crises levels at 720 000 t, but that was 12% improvement from last year's numbers.

Further, statistics indicated that the crude steel capacity use ratio of the 66 countries reporting to the World Steel Association declined significantly month-to-month, from 80,4% in June to 75,1% in July this year. However, compared to July last year it had increased with 2,7 percentage points.