Taiwan province’s top steel producer China Steel Corporation reported that its sales went down 8.5% or 951,413 tonnes on year to 10.3 million tonnes over 2019, while its pre-tax profit plunged by 60% on year. Among CSC’s total arbon steel sales for 2019, domestic market took 68%, which was two percentage points lower than the average 70% for 2018, though it was still largely in CSC’s normal domestic sales range of 68-72% for most of the year. The declines were mainly because of the weakening demand both in Taiwan and the overseas market amid a slow-down in the global economic growth. For 2019, CSC’s total pre-tax profit, therefore, slid to TWD 12.8 billion (USD 422 million) as against TWD 31.9 billion for 2018, and the company had been into lossmaking for the last two months of last year with the December losses amounting to over TWD 1 billion, or steeper than the losses of TWD 294 million for last November
