CHINA wants to work with the rest of the world to find an appropriate resolution to overcapacity in the steel sector, its foreign ministry said yesterday, after Britain asked the world’s top producer of the alloy to hurry up and tackle the problem.

    Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond made the request while meeting his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing on Saturday.

    A huge overcapacity and weak demand has prompted China, also the world’s top steel consumer, to ramp up exports to record highs, dragging down global prices of the commodity to decade lows. Britain is hoping to stem this flood of cheap supply, which India’s Tata Steel has blamed for its decision to pull out of the United Kingdom, putting 15,000 jobs at risk.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a daily news briefing that steel overcapacity was a global problem caused by declining demand and said Hammond and Wang had talked about how to effectively address it.

    China makes half of the world’s steel and produced 803.8 million tons in 2015.

    (SD-Agencies)