The amount of iron ore stocked at China's 19 ports dropped to 59.99 million tons as of December 19, down 19 percent from the previous month, according to MySteel.
Meanwhile, prices of spot iron ores have risen periodically.
Zeng Jiesheng, analyst with MySteel, attributed the current situation to steel price rise and the subsequent production resumption of a number of steel plants in recent time.
Currently, CIF price of Indian powder iron ore has increased to 80 US dollars/ton, up 20 percent from early November.
Chinese domestic spot ore prices have risen correspondingly. One example is factory price of powder iron ore in Tangshan up 14 percent to 722 yuan/ton.
Some analysts noted that such trend of iron ore stock drop, and price rise won't maintain long since the downstream steel market hasn't come to a real recovery.
Most steel plants that resume production currently are small and private ones, while large steel enterprises still keep output cut by 50~60 percent since they have overstocked imported iron ores under long-term agreements, according to Du Wei with Umetal.com.
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