POSCO Annual Report

While mergers and acquisitions are often the favored vehicle for growth in today's ultracompetitive markets, we prefer to partner with local firms in our global growth strategy. Over the years, we've cultivated partnerships in raw materials development, technical development, and downstream manufacturing that now reach around the globe. And more and more of these win-win partnerships are coming into full bloom.

We commissioned a considerable amount of new capacity at our Chinese joint ventures in 2003, enabling us to boost feedstock sales by 50.1% in terms of tonnage. During the year, China accounted for 36.7% of our exports, followed by Japan at 21.4%, Southeast Asia at 16.7%, the United States at 7.9%, and other countries at 17.3%.