Record vessel deliveries in first half this year

Vessel deliveries hit record levels during the first six months of this year.
The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy reported July 11 that vessel exports during the first half of this year increased 44.1% over the same period of last year, marking $5.7 billion in earnings. Last year vessel exports took 4.8% of all exports. Those same exports this year rose to occupy 7.2%, making vessel exports the third largest export item, up from fifth last year.

Even though ship-building increased only 4.5% compared to a year ago, exports of off-shore steel structures (Vessel exports includes both vessels and off-shore structures. Hence, despite a mere 4.5% growth in ship-building, ‘vessel exports’ surged 44.1% due to the increased demand for off-shore structures) were screaming hot at 1.26 billion dollars compared to last year’s 50 million dollars.

Based on this, MOCIE expected vessel exports for the year to pull in as much as 9.1 billion dollars in sales, posting an 11% growth over last year. However, vessel orders received in the first six months totaled 4.17 million CGT (Compensated Gross Tons), showing a 36.9% decline. The monetary value of those orders sits at about 6.75 billion dollars, a shrink of 25.4% from 2000.

Vessel orders at the time indicated that domestic shipping companies have still remained reluctant to purchase new vessels, with only two new vessels ordered. Vessel prices, by tonnage, increased by 18.3%. At the some time, gas tanker orders surged to 14.

A source at MOCIE said, "Though vessel orders showed a little set back compared with a year ago, we still had pretty much enough work to do. We secured workloads to last until the end of 2003, amounting to about 25.4 billion dollars."