Edging down 1.5% in productionand up 1% in sales From January through April, domestic reinforcing bar makers saw a slight drop in their production, while their sales inched up. The year-to-date total of reinforcing bar productionthrough April posted 3,600,600 tons, down 1.5% from 3,655,400 tons in the first four-month period of 2003, and the accumulated sales climbed 1% to 3,718,600 tons from 3,683,300 tons in the same comparison. Taking into consideration that Korea Iron & Steel closed down its Masan Plant and Hwanyoung Steel conducted its facility streamlining works from January through February, the overall output by other reinforcing bar makers in the first four-month period of this year was relatively quite high. Daehan Steel posted the most conspicuously high growth in production. Korea Iron & Steel and Hwanyong Steel experienced a year-on-year plunge of 20.5% and 21.7%, respectively, in the aggregate production until April, reducing the four-month sales by 16.7% and 19.0%, respectively, from a year ago. Daehan Steel posted a year-on-year surge of 22.8% in production and 21.5% in sales, respectively, from January through April as a result of its brisk production of reinforcing bars to meet the demand in the domestic market which formed a double-price structure with the selling price for reinforcing bars staying at a high price level due to the supply shortage of them despitea prolonged bullish trend of billet price. In April alone, domestic reinforcing bar makers produced 992,700 tons in total and sold 1,036,700 tons which were 1.2% and 5.8% higher than a year ago, respectively. Meanwhile, the accumulated exports of domestic reinforcing bars skyrocketed to 49,000 tons in the January-April period compared with 800 tons in the identical period of 2003. ctpark@snmnews.com