The China Machinery Industry Federation recently held a press conference on the economic operation situation of the machinery industry in the first half of 2014. In the first half of this year, the growth rate of China's machinery industry's major economic indicators was higher than the national industrial average. The export situation was positive, R&D and innovation made new achievements, and the industrial structure adjustment and upgrade showed positive changes, and the overall performance showed a stable and advanced trend.

Cai Weici, a special advisor to the China National Machinery Industry Federation, said in an interview with the China Industry News reporter that “The growth rate of the machinery industry is obviously higher than the national average level. This is a very big bright spot and a manifestation of the adjustment and upgrading of our national economic structure”.

Industry differentiation is obvious

Since the beginning of this year, the growth rate of the value added of the machinery industry has been higher than that of the national industry. From January to June, the accumulative growth rate of the value-added of machinery industry was 11.2%, which was higher than the growth rate of industrial added value of the whole country by 2.4 percentage points over the same period. In the machinery industry, the automotive industry is operating better than the non-automotive industry, and the non-automobile industry's operating situation is also better than the national average.

The industrial efficiency of machinery continued the upward trend in the second half of last year, with rapid growth, and profit growth has always been faster than income growth. From January to June, the industry realized a total profit of 715.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.58%, and a main business income of 10.4 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.52%. Since the beginning of the year, the profit rate of main business income of the machinery industry has kept rising. From January to June, the profit rate was 6.86%, an increase of 0.46 percentage points from the previous year. Regarding the reasons for the increase in profitability, Chen Bin, executive vice president of China Machine Vision, stated that on the one hand, energy and raw material prices have decreased year-on-year, and on the other hand, transformation and upgrading have achieved substantial results.

The economic operation of various industries in the machinery industry is clearly differentiated. Among them, the rapid growth of automobile production and sales amounted to 11.78 million vehicles and 11.68 million vehicles in the first half of the year, an increase of 9.6% and 8.36% respectively. The increase in related products encouraged by national industrial policies such as consumption and environmental protection was relatively good, and the output of wind power equipment, internal combustion engines, analytical instruments, optical instruments, pumps, fans, air separation equipment, compressors, environmental protection equipment, and electric motors increased significantly. The growth of products with larger relationships with investment, real estate, steel, and coal industries was in the doldrums. The recovery of the construction machinery industry in the first quarter was relatively obvious, but it fell back into decline in April and May. Due to the low base number of the machine tool industry, the output of major products has dropped since the beginning of this year, of which CNC machine tools have increased by 17.66%, which is higher than the growth rate of gold-cutting machine tools by 12%. The agricultural machinery industry was affected by the slowdown in market demand. Although the situation was acceptable at the beginning of the year, the output of large and medium tractors decreased month by month. In the first half of the year, the output of large and medium-sized tractors had all been negatively increased. The related products of power transmission and transformation equipment all have different degrees of growth.

In addition, in the first half of the year, the total investment in fixed assets of the machinery industry was 1.99 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.74%. Among them, the fixed asset investment growth rate in the month of June was 17.88%, showing that the company's market expectations are getting better. The import and export trade of the industry was better than the previous year, an increase of 8.87% year-on-year. Among them, the import of 155.9 billion US dollars, an increase of 10.96%; exports of 191.7 billion US dollars, an increase of 7.22%, a trade surplus of 35.8 billion US dollars.

Financial expenses regained momentum

It is worth noting that, following the improvement in financial costs last year, the increase in financial expenses regained momentum in the first half of this year and accounts receivable continued to be high. Since March, the accumulative growth rate of financial expenses has always been higher than 18%. From January to June, it fell back to 15.62%, 13.96% higher than the same period of last year. The financing environment of mechanical industrial enterprises is still rather severe. In this regard, Cai Weici said that this shows that the central government's policy of supporting the economic development of the entity needs further implementation.

Under the influence of multiple factors such as insufficient demand and rising financing costs, the accounts receivable of the machinery industry continued to rise at a high level and showed a monthly increase. From January to June, the accumulated amount reached 3.27 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.48%.

Cai Weici stated that in field research, the difficulty in recovering accounts is a problem that enterprises generally report. Among the accounts that are recovered, the most troublesome issue is that the acceptance draft “flys everywhere”, which further aggravates the financial pressure on the company. It is hoped that the policies supporting the development of the real economy will be further implemented. The improvement of the financial environment will require further work.

Affected by the lack of demand, the overall price level of the industry continued the downturn of the previous year. As of June, the cumulative price index for machinery products has been below 100% for 30 consecutive months. The growth rate of machinery industry inventory, especially the finished product inventory, is at a relatively high level, and tends to increase month by month. From January to June, it has risen to 15.06%. In this regard, Chen Bin proposed "to give necessary attention and vigilance."

According to the statistics of China National Machine Federation, this year's orders for key enterprises have fluctuated. In the first quarter, the orders of key machinery companies surveyed showed signs of recovery. They increased by 8.35% from January to February and 10.67% from January to March. However, after entering the second quarter, the growth rate of orders has significantly declined. From January to June, the growth rate was only 7.65% year-on-year, which was 3.02 percentage points lower than that of the first quarter. The market demand was weak and it was necessary to pay close attention to the trend in the latter period.

Independent innovation has bright spots

In the first half of the year, under the influence of the market forcing mechanism, the industrial restructuring of the machinery industry continued to advance, and product structure upgrades made positive progress. New breakthroughs were made in independent innovation, and the company's endogenous development momentum was more widely stimulated.

Taking machine tool products as an example, the CNC production rate of CNC machine tools from January to June was 30.18%, an increase of 1.38 percentage points from the level at the end of 2013; among foreign trade exports, the export value of metal processing machine tools increased by 10.76%. The export growth of CNC machine tools and machining centers was as high as 28.72% and 33.1%, and export products were developed to high-end. In the automotive industry, production and sales of new energy vehicles in the first half of the year were 20,692 units and 20,477 units, respectively, which were 2.3 times and 2.2 times more than the same period of last year. Production and sales volume had exceeded the level of the previous year. Although the proportion of new energy vehicles in the total automobile production and sales is still relatively small, compared with the previous period, the growth rate this year has been significantly accelerated.

In addition, high-end equipment independent innovation has new bright spots. The domestic ±800 kV HVDC converter transformer passed the new product technical appraisal, which indicates that China has mastered the independent design and autonomous manufacturing technology of the highest level converter transformer in the world, and has made significant progress in improving the core autonomy of DC transmission equipment. Manufactured ±1100 kV DC dry smoothing reactor and 1000 kV AC transformer insulated casing applied to UHV transmission and distribution project to complete technical appraisal, ±186 kV and ±400 kV transformer insulation bushings completed Product appraisal; New progress has been made in the autonomy of key control equipment for large-scale pumped storage units; the domestic market share of industrial domestic DCS control systems continues to rise.

Chen Bin pointed out that in order to meet the needs of users, the development of the machinery industry manufacturing service industry has accelerated, and more and more design institutes in the industry have extended their service areas and will provide owners with complete sets of solutions integrating workshops, processes and production lines as the main business. , The economic benefits are obvious. In addition, many companies have introduced advanced concepts such as capital operation, global resource integration, networking, and intelligence into the machinery industry and explored new development models.

Analyze the operation situation of the industry in the second half of the year, Chen Bin said that after experiencing the ups and downs of previous years, since 2013, the machinery industry has entered a relatively stable medium-speed growth stage. In the first half of this year, although there were some fluctuations in the macroeconomic operation, there were also unfavorable factors such as difficulty in recovering payment for goods, rising financing costs, and unreliability in ordering in the operation of the industry. However, the overall performance of the machinery industry still showed a steady and steady improvement. As a result, more and more companies are focusing their attention on research and development of competitive high-end products and expanding service areas, and the endogenous driving force for restructuring and upgrading of structural adjustments is increasing. In particular, the macroeconomic situation in China is warming up, and the development environment of the machinery industry is expected to gradually improve in the second half of the year. The global economy has generally improved, and the export market is expected to continue to maintain steady growth.

From this, Chen Bin expects that the trend of the machinery industry will basically remain stable in the second half of the year. The annual main income growth will be around 12%, the profit growth rate will be around 15%, and the export growth rate will be around 8%.