Features of metallurgy development in Ukraine and countries - world leading steel producers: comparative analysis

Abstract

Metallurgy is the basic industry of Ukrainian economy. In 2012 the workforce of this sector included 11.7% of total employment in the industry and the sales volume of metallurgical products was 18.8% of total industrial sales volume. Therefore the problems of metallurgy development are central in a lot of scientific publications. But because of high wear of fixed capital in many economic sectors and low level of introducing innovations in the economyas a whole disparity between development level of Ukrainian metallurgy and metallurgy of other steel producing countries is often overlooked. The objective of this article is to make a comparative analysis of the main characteristics of metallurgical industry in Ukraine and the countries that are the world leading steel producers. The subject of this survey is the economic indicators of technological level of metallurgical production. Methods used in the research are structure characteristics, dynamics analysis, correlation analysis, autoregressive forecasting models. It is highlighted in the article that the state policy for the support of metallurgy in crisis situations is not effective because it does not stimulate technical renovation of metallurgical enterprises. Obsolete equipment is the reason of high energy consumption in the metallurgical production. In 2012 steel made in open-hearth furnaces in Ukraine accounted for 52.2% of total world volume steel produced with this method. Continuous casting of steel also is not enough widely used in Ukraine: only 53.9% of steel was cast in continuous casting machines while in the world the same indicator is more than 95%. Implemented investment projects do not facilitate introducing of new technologies. This fact is proven with the analysis of relationship strength between the volume of investments and the volumes of steel produced in open-hearth furnaces and cast in continuous casting machines. It was demonstrated with forecasting models that in future the world steel market will not be balanced: the gap between world steel production and consumption will remain at 4.5-5.0%. At the same time the level of capacity utilization in Ukraine was only 69% in 2012. So increasing the competitiveness of Ukrainian metallurgy is very important task. For successful solving this problem further research of industrial sectors, which are suppliers of raw materials and consumers of metallurgical products, are required.