Machinery industry sees modest growth

Led by heavy mining machinery, electrical engineering and general basic parts sectors, China’s machine-building industry has posted a mild acceleration in the growth of production and sales since April this year.

According to the China Machinery Industry Association, the machine-building industry registered a 20.55% year on year growth in gross output value in the January-October period, 0.3 percentage point higher than that for the January-September

period, and a 20.86% increase in industrial sales value, 0.22 percentage points higher. The growth rate of both indicators has picked up moderately since April, up an average of 0.4 and 0.44 percentage points respectively.

By sector, heavy mining machinery, electrical engineering machinery and general basic parts sectors led the output growth, hitting 31.5%, 29.46% and 29.51% respectively. These sectors played a substantial role in bringing up the growth of the entire machine-building industry. Export delivery of the industry kept up hefty growth in the first ten months, up 31.54% year-on-year to hit 543.169 billion yuan (US$67 billion). The growth rate was down a slight 0.45 percentage points from that of January-September.

The sales-production ratio of the machine-building industry hit an intra-year high of 98.97% in October, slightly higher than the average of the nation’s industrial sector as a whole (98.08%). For the January-October period, the sales-production ratio of the industry stood at 97.39%, slightly lower than the average of the nation’s entire industrial sector (97.89%).

Despite the hefty output and sales growth, the industry’s economic efficiency remained poor. In the first three quarters, the industry’s total profit after being offset by losses reached 139.889 billion yuan, down 1.4% from the figure for the year earlier period. The profit decline range was being smaller in recent months, down 2.77 percentage points from January-August, 13.24 percentage points from the first quarter and 7.65 percentage points from the first half of this year.

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