Japanese Ship Orders Sink for 14th Month

Japanese export ship orders sank for the 14th consecutive month in November on a year-on-year basis, tumbling 23.5 percent to 404,190 gross tons, according to figures released by the Japan Ship Exporters' Association on Tuesday.

Ship owners' demand for new vessels remains extraordinarily weak. With easy comparisons with year ago figures, the pace of decline slowed for the second month in a row and in November was the slowest since the nation's export ship orders suddenly started to plunge in October last year due to the deep global economic downturn triggered by the financial crisis that had erupted in the United States in the previous month.

Until October 2009, orders fell by more than 70 percent in every month; the worst was a 91.1 percent drop in December last year. Last month orders were down 37.3 percent in comparison with the leading edge of the decline last October, when orders dived 83.9 percent from the previous year.

In November, Japanese shipbuilders received orders for 13 export ships, none of them container ships. In the year to date, Japanese shipbuilders received orders for 104 export ships totaling 5,240,110 gross tons, down 72.6 percent from the same 11-month period of last year.

Contact Hisane Masaki at yiu45535@nifty.com.