Chinese shipbuilders are building more ships this year than in last year.
China's Ministry of Industry & Information Technology announced of late that the country's shipyards have built 25.07m dwt of newbuildings during January-May period, up 6% on the same period of last year. Export ships accounted for 84.7% of them.
New ship orders stood at 18.11m dwt in the same period, down 7.8% y-o-y. Export ship orders took 73.2%.
At the end of May Chinese yards' combined orderbook fell 6% to 184.15m dwt, compared to 2010 end. It was down 1.05% from a year ago. Export ship orders occupy 85.3% of the backlog.
Meanwhile, Chinese yards suffered order cancellation for 1.17m dwt newbuildings during the first five months. The figure equates to 0.63% of the orderbook.