The depressed shipping and shipbuilding market has greatly hindered the ship import and export activities in China. Insiders say that China ship import and export has turn to downturn after the golden age in the global shipbuilding slack.
According to the China Customs, the total import and export value has come to $13.857bn in the first four months this year, a decrease of 0.3% year on year. The export ships total value increased by 2.0% to $13.3bn, while import ship total fell by 28.4% to $665.0m on a y-o-y basis.
Bulkers, tankers and containerships are still the mainstream of export ships, occupying 76% of the total value. Over half of the ships went to Asia countries. Latin American customers got ships almost double the amount in the same period of last year while European countries bought 30% less ships year on year. Jiangsu is still the biggest ship export base in China and exported about 27% of the total.
Elder ships for scrapping and floating units accounted for over 75% of the import ships in the period. At the same time, purchase for motorboat without outboard engines increased greatly. Asia and Europe are the main suppliers for Chinese buyers. However, the volume and the value all saw sharp declines in the period.