The world's top-ranked and largest miner, BHP Billiton, on Wednesday shared an upbeat outlook for commodities, after having shipped about 50% of its record quarterly iron ore production to China, a development which has set the platform for a higher output for the current year.

The firm shared heavy price recoveries across all its important commodities, right from iron ore and copper to nickel and aluminium, for the three months up-to December. The successful report has been attributed by the company to strong sales across China as well as inventory rebuilding that happened in developed economies of the world.

For the December quarter, BHP produced 32.45 million tons of iron ore from mines across Australia and Brazil, and nearly 50% of the production went to China, where steel manufacturers have given up locally produced iron ore in favour of the imported quality as it reportedly contains more iron.

"Government stimulus measures appear to have supported a gradual return to normalized global trade, albeit from a low base, and most key indicators across the developed economies showed improvement", BHP said.

China is now expecting the release of some important official data on Thursday, which is expected to reveal China's return to double-digit economic growth over the year's fourth quarter, which is delightful news for BHP as China is its key trading partner.