CHINA’S LEAD OUTPUT BOUNCE MARKS FIRST MAJOR ECONOMY TO SHOW COVID-19 RECOVERY

December 1st, 2020: China’s lead production rose 9.9% year on year in November to a monthly record high of 599,000 tonnes, according to news agency Reuters quoting the National Bureau of Statistics on November 17.

The figures are in line with a report by the state news agency Xinhua, which said industrial recovery in China in the third quarter of 2020 was the strongest growth of the year.

The third quarter returned the first nine months of the year to a 0.7% overall expansion, the first of the world’s major economies to do so, following a 6.8% contraction in the first quarter “when the virus took its drastic toll”, Xinhua said.

“Seen from the trends of the key indicators, China’s epidemic prevention and economic recovery are at the world’s forefront, which shows the strong resilience and vitality of the economy,” the agency quoted the National Bureau of Statistics’ Liu Aihua as saying.

China is expected to produce 3 million tonnes of recycled lead a year by 2025, a report by Platts said, quoting the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association. This would be a 50% increase on the output during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), which overall stood at 10 million tonnes.