The Iron and Steel Industry in Asia: Development and Restructuring

The paper examines the development and restructuring of the iron and steel industryin Asian countries. Studying countries that have integrated steelworks with largeblast furnaces (South Korea, Taiwan, China and India) and countries without(Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia), the paper shows the difference in thedevelopment processes across the countries and across time, and points to thediversity of the development experience of these countries. The paper argues thatsignificant differences in steel production technologies in terms of initial investmentand minimum-efficient scale, the changing role of the state, and shifting demandstructures in the domestic steel markets of each country have been the importantfactors that led to the differences in the development path of the steel industry ineach country.