shougang weighs stake in australia ore miner, page-2

Housing boom to benefit Shougang


WANG XIANGWEI in Beijing
Apr 22, 1998



One of the mainland's largest steel-makers, Shougang Corp, expects to see significant growth in sales and profits this year as it will benefit from Beijing's efforts to boost housing-sector investment to kick-start the economy.
President Luo Bingsheng yesterday said the company was also speeding up preparations to inject interests in its wholly-owned commercial and residential building East Lake Villa into its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary Shougang Concord Grand.



The company, which mainly manufactures construction steel, planned to increase its land bank in urban Beijing by one million square metres (about 10.7 million square feet), to three million sq metres, in the next three years.

The central government says it will use housing as one of the country's new engines of economic growth for this year, with mainland banks promising 100 billion yuan (about HK$93.06 million) in loans for the housing sector - more than treble the figure for last year.

Mr Luo said Shougang would benefit significantly from the decision as he expected the housing sector to go full steam ahead in the second half of the year.

He said the company made an after-tax profit of 957 million yuan last year on sales of 36.7 billion yuan.

Mr Luo said the company was also pushing ahead with the plan to issue A shares to domestic investors to provide part of the four billion yuan financing needs.

He said more money would be used on property development, service industry and high technology