India's crude steel production grew 3.5 per cent to 8.36 million tonnes (MT) in July this year, says the latest report by World Steel Association.

The steel output stood at 8.08 MT in the same month last year, it said.

Domestic production in the January-July period of 2017 increased by 5.4 per cent to 58.01 MT over 55.07 MT in the same period of 2016, the data showed.

Global steel production for the 67 countries reporting to World Steel Association (worldsteel) was 143.24 MT in July this year, registering an increase of 6.3 per cent over 134.798 MT in July 2016.

For the first seven months of 2017, global steel production stood at 977.32 MT, up 4.6 per cent from 933.97 MT in the same period of 2016.

World's top steel producer China produced 74.021 MT last month, up 10.3 per cent over the year-ago month when the country had produced 67.12 MT.

Japan has witnessed a contraction in its steel production. The second largest steel producing nation produced 8.588 MT steel, down 4.3 per cent from 8.971 MT a year ago.

The United States produced 7.07 MT, up 5.6 per cent from 6.69 MT earlier.

"The crude steel capacity utilisation ratio of the 67 countries in July 2017 was 72.1 per cent. This is 3.2 percentage points higher than July 2016. Compared to June 2017, it is 1.5 percentage points lower," worldsteel said.

India has overtaken the US to become the world's third largest steel producer and the country is now looking to replace Japan from the second spot.

Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh had earlier said that India is heading towards becoming the second largest steel producer in the world.

"If you see what India produced last was 100 MT and Japan 104 MT. Soon, we will be the second largest steel producer in the world," the minister had said.