China's steel rebar futures clocked a fifth straight weekly gain on Friday, buoyed by expectations of strong demand as steel inventories fell to a two-year low.
The most-traded steel rebar contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, for January 2020 delivery, closed up 0.3% at 3,655 yuan ($519.40) per tonne, recovering from morning losses. It gained 3.1% this week.
Hot-rolled coil on the Shanghai exchange, for January delivery, rose 0.5% to 3,531 yuan per tonne.
Steel inventories in China fell to 7.8 million tonnes in the week to Nov. 21, the lowest in two years, according to data compiled by Mysteel consultancy.
"The consumption for steel products has been good," said Zhao Yu, an analyst with Huatai Futures, while explaining recent drop in steel stocks.
China has largely leaned on a prescription of higher infrastructure spending, tax cuts and frequent liquidity injections to cushion the current slowdown.
Beijing has pledged to lower the minimum capital ratio requirement for some infrastructure investment projects earlier this month.
The most-actively traded iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange jumped as much as 2.6% on Friday. It closed up 2.2% to 651 yuan per tonne.
Dalian coking coal fell 0.8% to 1,250 yuan per tonne, while Dalian coke gained 0.7% to 1,815 yuan a tonne.
Shanghai stainless steel futures surged 1.4% to 14,530 yuan per tonne.
China on Friday revised up its nominal 2018 gross domestic product by 2.1% to 91.93 trillion yuan, keeping it on track to achieve a goal to double the size of its economy by 2020 from 2010.