China's crude steel output would surely top 500 million tonnes this year, said Luo Bingsheng, vice chairman of China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) on Saturday.

In the first half, China produce 266.58 million tonnes of crude steel, up 1.23 percent over the same period last year. In June alone, the daily output was about 1.65 million tonnes on average.

Compared with an increasing production capacity, the country's steel enterprises saw declining profits and revenues in the first six months amid low steel prices resulted from weaken market demands.

According to statistics covered 71 of China's large-scale steel producers, total business revenue of them dropped 28.07 percent year on year to 955 billion yuan (139.82 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half. Profit decreased by 98.32 percent to 1.73 billion yuan.

China produced 500 million tonnes of crude steel last year, accounting for 38 percent of the world total production volume.

(Xinhua News Agency August 2, 2009)