Machinery industry will continue its smooth tone

In 2013, the growth rate of production and sales of the machinery industry was about 12%, and the industry as a whole showed a slow recovery, moderate growth, and stable development. Looking forward to 2014, Cai Weici, executive vice president of the China Federation of Machinery Industry, said that the booming of the machinery industry is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. The overall demand will remain tight and the development of the industry will maintain its “smooth” tone.

In 2013, structural adjustment saw results

Overall, China's machinery industry achieved moderate growth in 2013. Statistics for the past 11 months showed that the growth rate of the machinery industry's added value was 10.7%, which was 1 percentage point higher than the national average growth rate (9.7%) and 2.5 percentage points higher than the same period of the previous year (8.2%); Business revenue totaled 18.3 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.46% year-on-year; total profit was 1,215 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.68%, which was 2.51% higher than the national industry; cumulative total import and export volume was 609.6 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 2.94%. The trade surplus was 66.127 billion U.S. dollars; fixed asset investment was 3.65 trillion yuan, an increase of 17.45% year-on-year, which was lower than the increase in fixed assets investment in all manufacturing industries and the whole society.

Of the 64 major products in the statistics, there were 40 cumulative cumulative growth rates, accounting for 62.5%. The main products automotive production from January to December 2013 reached 22,116,800 units, with sales of 21.984 million units, an increase of 14.76% and 13.87% year-on-year, respectively, and the growth rate was significantly higher than expected at the beginning of last year. At the same time, the production of important products such as power generation equipment, metal cutting machine tools, construction machinery, and mining and air separation equipment is still declining.

While the industry's production and sales have grown steadily, the industrial structure has continued to adjust in the expected direction. The industries with close relationships with consumption, informatization, and automation are developing at a significantly faster pace than the typical investment products industry. The vehicles with the largest total proportion have grown rapidly since last year, and are the main industries that boost the growth rate of the machinery industry. From the perspective of regional development, the development of the central and western regions is significantly faster than that of the eastern region. From the perspective of the nature of the enterprise, the development of private enterprises is faster than the average speed of the industry.

What is worthy of recognition is that new progress has been made in the drive for innovation in the machinery industry, integration of the two industries, and green development. Under the force of the market, many companies have opened up new market spaces by developing high-end products. The autonomy of high-end equipment has begun to advance into the depth field. For example, the passive components of key components such as outlet devices of UHV power transmission and transformation equipment and high-voltage insulating casings are being subjected to passive changes for a long time. The application of domestic high-end CNC machine tools in aviation and automotive fields has been somewhat improved. breakthrough.

Among them, the industry leader companies represented by Weichai, Dongdian, etc., pay more and more attention to the building of innovation capabilities, and the investment in R&D laboratories has increased significantly. The rapid warming of automation, intelligence and information transformation of enterprises has promoted the improvement of production efficiency, processing quality and management level. Energy conservation, emission reduction and green manufacturing have become important measures for mechanical enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities and transformation and upgrading. Industrial agglomerations are continuously upgraded, professional division of labor continues to deepen, and the industrial chain continues to prolong.

What needs to be vigilant is that under the pressure of slowing demand, overcapacity, rising costs, and downward pressure on prices, the industry's profit rate has dropped year-on-year. Since entering the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”, the profit rate of the machinery industry has dropped from the historic high of 8.38% (the number of annual reports) in 2010 at the end of the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period to 6.65% (Express) in January-November 2013.

In this regard, Cai Weici said that the downward trend in profit margins is far more profound than the decline in profit growth, indicating that the machinery industry has not really shaken off its predicament and has yet to enter a sound development track. The pace of industrial transformation and upgrading must also be accelerated, and efforts must be made to increase production efficiency and reduce resource consumption.

In 2014, the degree of prosperity is mild

Judging from the situation faced by the development of the machinery industry in 2014, China will continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy, and make full use of the counterforce mechanism to adjust the industrial structure. Mechanical industry operations will still face weak demand, and the pressure on industry growth is still very high.

However, considering the continuity and stability of the policy, in 2014, the economic operation of the machinery industry still has the basic conditions for maintaining overall stability, and will continue the steady operation trend in 2013. At the same time, through the advancement of industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization, new consumer and investment needs will be created and international and domestic market space will be expanded.

From an international perspective, the market is slowly recovering. Given that China's machinery industry has its own unique comparative advantages, especially in recent years, privately-owned machinery companies are accelerating the pace of "going out". This momentum will effectively promote the machinery industry to increase its international market share. Therefore, China Machine Building believes that there can be cautiously optimistic expectations for the moderate growth of mechanical product exports in the coming years.

Specifically, the boom of the machinery industry in 2014 was neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It is expected that the development of the industry will continue to maintain a "smooth" tone. New market demand will stabilize at a low level.

From the perspective of various industry developments, it is expected that conventional power generation equipment, metallurgical and mining equipment, heavy machinery, general machine tools and other industries will continue to be in weak demand in 2014; the demand for high-end machine tools, robots, and automatic production lines will rise; the construction machinery market will recover. From the ups and downs gradually return to normal; the growth rate of automobile and agricultural machinery production and sales will gradually decline, but the large-scale high-end agricultural machinery products market will still be prosperous.

Cai Weici reminded companies that from the apparent point of view, the downturn of the machinery industry in the past two years was due to weak demand and overcapacity. However, this is only a superficial reason. The deeper and more essential reason is that the economic development stage in China has undergone profound changes, but the industry The development model has not changed along with it.

He believes that under the "buyer's market", whether it can meet the increasing and increasingly diversified requirements of users has become the only standard to measure the "good or bad" products, and it has also become a device manufacturing company can be recognized by users, and eventually become scarce. The main factor of the order.

Therefore, under the current situation, if we want to improve our competitiveness, we must shift from the pursuit of "scale benefits" to the pursuit of "scarcity benefits." In other words, machinery companies must shift their efforts to pursue the "scale benefits" of many products that can be produced by their peers, and turn to every possible means to obtain the "scarcity benefits" that are supported by their own unique advantages.

Specifically, mechanical companies must change the customary thinking of extension and expansion, and strive to cultivate their own unique core competitiveness. Increase R&D investment, attach importance to the construction of test conditions and human resources investment, and improve the innovation capability of products and processes. Actively promote the deep integration of informatization and industrialization, pursue the green and internationalization of products and production processes, and increase the lean level of production and marketing management of enterprises.

“In the end, we should respond to the severe challenges that have entered the '12th Five-Year Plan'. Mechanical companies must consciously implement the five strategies of 'mainly attacking high-end, solid foundation, innovation-driven integration, and integration of green and green',” Cai Weici stressed.

Regarding the issue of the decline in the export growth rate of mechanical products, Cai Weici suggested that relevant departments should attach great importance to the difficulties encountered in exporting mechanical products. Many difficulties such as trade protectionism, appreciation of the renminbi, and rising costs are rapidly weakening the competitiveness of China's machinery industry. In view of the fact that the machinery industry is the main support for the upgrading of China's foreign trade structure, it is recommended that relevant departments use the regulatory role of taxation leverage to support the healthy and sustainable development of the machinery industry.