Amid serious global recession of shipping and shipbuilding industry, demands for shipbuilding equipment around the world have sharply decreased while China’s exports of marine equipment turned out to have been stable relatively.

According to data from the General Administration of Customs of China, China’s imports and exports of shipbuilding equipment and materials in 2012 were reported to be $7.3bn, showing a 6.2% decrease against the same time period of the previous year. Of which, exports were said to be $2.93bn worth with a year-on-year 13.5% increase while imports fell 14.8% to $4.37bn.

On the perspective of shipbuilding equipment industry in 2013, China has said that the growth of equipment export will be lowered, affected by overall slump in global and Chinese shipbuilding industry, and decreasing trend of imports is expected to be worse. However, considering increasing demand for offshore sector, it is stressed that China needs to push forward to expansion in market share through restructuring.

In 2012, China exported to 94 countries and regions, Asia accounting for 57.4% of total exports with $1.68bn worth of marine equipment, which saw 18.1% increase from the same time period of 2011 in value terms. It exported more than $100m to six countries and regions, in order by country, Hong Kong, Japan, the U.S, Korea, Germany and Singapore.

Meanwhile, China imported more than 90% of marine equipment in total from Asia and Europe countries. The equipment imported from Asia in 2012 was worth $2.58bn, accounting for 59.1% of total, but had a 18.4% decrease compared to the same time period in 2011.

Particularly, China imported marine equipment worth of more than $100m from seven countries; it imported $1.5bn, $860m and $380m of equipment from Korea, Japan and Germany, respectively.

Source from Asiasis Daily News