By Hao Zhou (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-08-08 15:15

China Coking Industry Association unveiled first half statistics of China's coking and chemical industry yesterday, Shanghai Securities News reported.

In the first half this year, coking enterprises in scale, meaning all the State-owned coking enterprises and the non-State enterprises with annual sales income of over five million yuan, reported a total coke production of 156.8 million tons, up 21 percent from a year before.

Meanwhile, the apparent consumption of coke totaled 148.8 million tons, an increase of 21.54 percent year-on-year. The apparent consumption is calculated by China's total coke production to imports, then subracting exports.

Also, coking enterprises in scale realized profits of a total more than 4 billion yuan, rising 8.53 times compared with the same period of last year, mainly lifted by the surging demands in steel, chemical, non ferrous metal, and machinery industries.

For instance, outputs of crude steel and pig iron in steel industry, which accounted for 87 percent of the national coke consumption, increased 18.92 percent and 16.84 percent year-on-year respectively in the first half of the year. At the same time, yields of ferroalloy and carbide, which also consume coke at a large scale, hiked 35.33 percent and 24.13 percent year-on-year respectively.

As demand for coke grows wildly, the coke prices in Shanxi and Hebei, two provinces with the largest productions of coke, both in North China, were raised by 20 yuan to 100 yuan.

However, Huang Jingan, the director of the coking association, said the whole coking and chemical industry had suffered a slump in the second half of 2005. Currently, the average profit margin in the coking industry is only 25.72 yuan per-ton coke, and 32.68 percent of the enterprises are still in loss.

China exported about 14.5 million tons of coke last year, less than five percent of the total domestic production, but almost half of the trading volume in the entire international market.

The coke industry generates severe pollutions, straining the country's sustainable development. Hou Shiguo, deputy director of industrial policy department of the National Development and Reform Commission, disclosed that the central government will carry out measures to cut down the export amount of coke.

The country has mainly utilized the rebate rate and quota to curb the coke export. Three years ago, the coke enterprises could enjoy a 13 percent export tax rebate. However, that policy was eliminated and those companies now pay 15 percent more in taxes.

Consequently, the average export price of coke reached a record high of US$ 186 per ton in June this year, far exceeding the ever-low US$118.9 per ton in February last year.

Coking coal, the raw material of coke, is a kind of scarce resource, and all the developed nations procure it via import. China had better reduce its coke export to five to six million tons, said Xu Guangcheng, former director of the association.