China will strictly control its steel output this year to improve the economic performance of the metallurgical industry, a senior official with the State Administration of Metallurgical Industry (SAMI) said Wednesday.

SAMI plans to produce no more than 110 million tons of steel this year, and the output of steel products will be restricted within 100 million tons.

In January, SAMI sent seven research teams along with about 50 officials to iron and steel companies nationwide to check up on the output-control policy. They found that the monthly production plans of the large and medium-sized companies met SAMI requirements.

China's 46 major iron and steel companies turned out 8.54 million tons of steel in January this year, 226,400 tons more than planned.

The output-control policy has taken effect as steel price in domestic market stopped dropping and even regained 31 yuan per ton this January from last year's level. Moreover, the production-to-sales ratio reached nearly 100 percent in January.

Latest figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that China produced 124.26 million tons of steel last year, a 7.5 percent increase over 1998.