SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China’s coal imports slipped in December from a month earlier as industrial activity slowed following a surge in COVID-19 cases after Beijing’s sudden removal of stringent pandemic controls.
The world’s top coal consumer brought in 30.91 million tonnes of the fossil fuel last month, versus 32.31 million in November, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on Friday. That was largely flat compared with 30.95 million tonnes imported in December 2021.
China’s customs agency published the import data on its website shortly after 0200 GMT, but later the information was no longer available on the site.
Millions of people have fallen ill since China abandoned its zero-COVID strategy in early December, forcing factories to lower operations due to labour shortages and hitting coal demand for industrial use and power generation.
For 2022, coal shipments to China reached 293.2 million tonnes, down 9.2% from a year earlier, as the country boosted domestic coal production and urged utilities to sign term-deals with domestic miners to bolster its energy security.
China introduced a price cap on domestic thermal coal early last year aimed at lowering power generation costs at utilities and avoiding another round of power shortages nationwide which was recorded in 2021.
The policy led to China’s domestic coal prices being much lower than supplies from abroad for many months as global coal prices soared over supply concerns after the Russia-Ukraine war.
Chinese coal imports are expected to pick up after the Lunar New Year in late January and early February as factories reopen and economic recovery prospects brighten the outlook for demand.
But as the central government continues to urge miners to crank up production and force utilities to expand their term contracts with domestic miners – to 2.6 billion tonnes in 2023 from around 2 billion tonnes in 2022 – the volume of imported coal could be capped.
China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association (CCTD) expects the country to bring in nearly 300 million tonnes of overseas coal in 2023, around the same level as 2022.
(Reporting by Muyu Xu and Chen Aizhu; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
