NMDC chairman Sumit Deb says, “the expansion programs to result in incremental ore demand and the country focus on execution of infrastructure projects that will require more and more steel. How NMDC will be faring in the remaining quarters of 2021-22 cannot but be influenced ore prices behavior in the world market, which in turn will be based on Chinese imports.” 

An Odisha-based iron ore producer-exporter says: “No doubt, miners here are a major beneficiary as China stepped up ore imports in line with its crude steel production rising from 803.8 million tons in 2015 to 1.053 billion tons in 2020. Australia has a share of over 60% of Chinese imports. But as political differences with Canberra are growing and also in pursuance of a well thought out strategy to step up buying from other ore producing countries, we could step up our exports to 44 million tons to China in 2020 from 23.8 million tons in 2019. Remember, almost two-thirds of our exports to China had less than 58% iron content for which there is very little domestic demand.”