SINGAPORE- Iron ore futures moved higher on Tuesday on hopes that China’s latest wave of disappointing production and property sector data could push authorities for more stimulus.
The most-traded January iron ore on China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange was up 1 percent at 736 yuan ($101.16) per metric ton.
On the Singapore Exchange, the benchmark September iron ore rose 0.4 percent to $100.9 a metric ton.
China’s crude steel output in July eased 0.34 percent from the prior month, the statistics bureau said on Tuesday, because of production restrictions in Tangshan city in northern China and Sichuan province in the southwest.
Meanwhile, July industrial output and retail sales growth slowed and undershot forecasts, adding to a raft of recent weak data, suggesting policymakers may need to step up support measures to shore up a faltering economy.
Less than an hour before the data release, China’s central bank unexpectedly cut key policy rates for the second time in three months.
Adding pressure, property investment in China fell 8.5 percent in the first seven months from the same period a year earlier, after sliding 7.9 percent in January-June, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
