Production reached 40.3 million tons last month, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement yesterday. This broke the previous record of 40.2 million tons set in March, Bloomberg data showed.

"Robust domestic demand and exports boosted production, which were expected," said Xu Aihua, senior analyst at Beijing Antaike Information Development Co. "We are bullish on demand in this quarter because of a construction boom."

Steel product output rose 21 percent to 46 million metric tons last month, the bureau said. That compares with the record 47 million tons in March. China increased steel exports 33 percent to 7.16 million tons in April compared with a year ago.

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