At least that’s the headline from worldsteel which published world crude steel production data for January today. Of course that’s a rise of 25% comparing January 2010 to January 2009. The press release is here and you can mess about with all the data in the Nerds spreadsheet below.
The more interesting analysis is likely more deeply buried in it. Such as, world crude steel output grew 1.8% December 2009 to January 2010; the developed economies actually grew faster (5.4%) than developing economies (0.5%) month to month. But then they have to. World steel capacity utilization was reported to be 72.9% in January, just a shade above the 68.6% reported by the AISI for the US in the week ending February 20th.