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SEOUL, Nov 27 (Reuters) - South Korea's POSCO , the world's fourth-largest steel maker, said on Thursday its crude steel output was expected to rise slightly to a record 29 million tonnes in 2004 in line with the recovering economy.
A POSCO spokesman told Reuters that would be slightly higher than about 28 million tonnes projected for this year. He said domestic demand for steel products would also probably grow to a record 48 million tonnes next year from the 45.5 million tonnes estimated for 2003 by a local industry association.
"We will be announcing our official forecasts later this year but the data was published on our website as part of our explanation of the future business environment," spokesman Oh Dong-ho said.
POSCO said on its Korean-language website (http://weekly.posco.co.kr) the growth in domestic demand would be led by high economic growth mainly in China and also elsewhere in the world next year.
The company's 2004 forecast is higher than the 45.9 million tonnes of steel product demand projected by the Korea Iron & Steel Industry Association.
POSCO had been referred to as the world's third-largest maker after Europe's Arcelor and Japan's Nippon Steel Corp , but Oh said on Thursday latest data put it as the world's fourth-largest behind British-based LNM as well.
POSCO shares were trading 0.4 percent lower at 141,500 won at 0500 GMT, in line with the broad market , which was moving unchanged on the day.