'Credit crunch shock should moderate early next year'

LONDON: Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal has said that the shock of credit crunch should moderate by early next year, with the crisis mainly affecting the financial and consumer sectors.

"I am sure that there will be some calmness in the whole turmoil in the next six to nine months," media reported quoting Lakshmi Mittal, who is the chairman and chief executive of world's biggest steel maker ArcelorMittal.

According media, Lakshmi Mittal said that large parts of manufacturing industry would not suffer the same problems as those parts of the world economy more closely linked to banking and finance such as housing and consumer goods.

"The world had to "differentiate" between the industrial and consumer parts of the global economy, and recognise that they would behave differently as a result of today's difficult conditions, including tightness in credit markets and commodity and food inflation," the daily said.

The India-origin billionaire indicated that substantial parts of the broad industrial sector across the world would perform in a satisfactory way in the next one to two years. He also added that much of this related to the demand for manufactured products in emerging economies such as China and India.

"They (such countries) are continuing to grow and they need to grow. They are not stopping (their economic activity) even if they have slowed down their progress," Lakshmi Mittal said.