China's steel industry kept fast growth in the first three quarters of 2005, with a total production of 255.286 million tons of crude steel, up 27.39 percent year-on-year.

At a press briefing held by China Iron and Steel Association (CISA), Luo Bingsheng, executive vice-chairman, said the production of iron was 239.213 million tons, up 30.98 percent and rolled steel was 268.819 million tons or an increase of 25.82 percent.

Despite fast growth of production, Luo said, large parts of the production are of low-class production and China still needs to import a large amount of high-class steel.

In the first three quarters, China imported 20 million tons of steel, down 16.4 percent year-on-year, more than 85 percent of which was high-class production.

Luo said China will upgrade the energy-expensive and environment-polluting equipment with advanced versions.

In the first three quarters, fixed assets investment in the steel industry reached 173.3 billion yuan, up 28.1 percent, 12.3 percentage points less than the growth rate of the same term of 2004.

Luo said the scale of fixed-asset investment was still very large and will bring negative effect to China's steel industry.

In the first three quarters, the sales income of 68 major steel companies was 903.09 billion yuan, up 25.63 percent and the profits were 65.35 billion yuan, up 11.73 percent year-on-year.