China's shipbuilding output down 21.4% in 2012

China's shipbuilding output stood at 60.21 million deadweight tonnage (DWT) in 2012, down 21.4 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The output of seagoing vessels, a major ship type, was 19.01 million compensated gross tonnage (CGT), said a MIIT statement on Monday.

China received orders of 20.41 million DWT in 2012, down 43.6 percent from the previous year. New orders for seagoing vessels were 8.69 million CGT last year.

Existing orders for Chinese shipbuilders reached 106.95 million DWT at the end of 2012, down 28.7 percent from the end of 2011. Orders for seagoing vessels stood at 36 million CGT, of which 82.7 percent were for exports.

In March, the ministry released a plan to further strengthen China's shipbuilding industry during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), saying it will rationalize the sector's structure, to innovate and improve overall quality over the next three years.

During the 11th Five-Year Plan, the country's shipbuilding industry experienced rapid growth, according to the plan.

The country became the world's largest shipbuilder by 2010, when it built ships of 65.6 million DWT and took 43.6 percent of the global ship market.

Maximum DWT is the amount of weight a ship can carry without riding dangerously low in the water.

CGT is an indicator of the amount of work that is necessary to build a given ship and is calculated by multiplying the DWT of a vessel by various coefficients in proportion to complexities. It is more accurate to reflect a shipbuilder's building capacity.