The production value of the nation’s steel industry is estimated to exceed NT$1 trillion (US$33.26 billion) this year, backed by a recovering global economy that spurred demand for steel products, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.

“Production value has surged 30 percent to NT$559.1 billion in the first six months of this year. We are confident that it will surpass NT$1 trillion by the end of the year,” the ministry’s Department of Statistics said in a statement.

The last time the nation’s steel industry reached NT$1 trillion in production value was in 2014, when it grew 3.4 percent annually to NT$1.26 trillion, statistics showed.

The nation’s steel industry dropped below NT$1 trillion and faced two straight years of annual decline in production values in 2015 and last year, mainly due to a slow global economy and China’s over expanded production capacity, which dragged down the average selling price of steel goods, the department said .

The production value of Taiwan’s steel industry last year plummeted to NT$913.6 billion, the lowest in the past decade, the statistics showed.

Beijing initiated steel production cuts last year, the effect of which has been seen since the beginning of this year, the department said in the report.

The recovering global economy helped raise the average selling price of global raw materials, which stimulated downstream steel manufacturers’ demand for upstream materials, the report said.

The department said the output of iron and steel melting, such as steel billets, and iron and steel rolls contributed 94.1 percent of the total production value to the nation’s steel industry in the first half of this year.

The production value of steel billets expanded 37.1 percent annually in the first six months of this year, while hot-rolled steel coils were boosted by 41.7 percent year-on-year, the department said.

Taiwan’s steel products are mainly for domestic use.

The exports accounted for nearly 30 percent of total production, the department said.

Exports of steel products rose 30.2 percent to US$5.5 billion in the first seven months of this year, with China, the nation’s largest steel export destination, accounting for 13 percent, the department said.