Wuhu Ship Exchange traded 1,046 vessels in 2008, recording a dead weight tonnage of 762,000 tons, third in the national ranking, and a total transaction value of Rmb1.13bn, eighth in the national ranking. According to the Fourth National Ship Exchange conference on Information, Co-operation and Development held recently in Wuhu, the city’s shipbuilding capability and geographic location helped facilitate the rise in its importance for the vessel trading sector.

At its peak in 2004, the transaction value stood at Rmb1.4bn with more than 220 ship brokers operating there. Vessels were traded from across Hubei, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Shandong, Henan, Fujian and Guangdong provinces. However, there was a big decline in business levels and in the number of ship brokers over the following two years. In December 2006, the local government put in Rmb200,000 to renovate the building and re-organised the management before trading resumed.

In the shipbuilding sector, the 1,791 largest shipyards recorded a combined total export delivery value of Rmb96.8bn in the first five months of 2009, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information. This was up 25.8 per cent year-on-year, but represented a fall of 38.9 percentage points on the previous year’s growth rate. They achieved a total industrial output of Rmb203.bn, up 38.8 per cent year-on-year, representing a fall of 18.7 percentage points.

Deliveries are on the rise while new orders remain scarce. The ministry’s statistics show that deliveries in the first five months reached 12.16m dwt, up 61 per cent compared with the same period last year, while new build orders plummeted as much as 96 per cent to 1.18m dwt. New orders in May totalled a mere 190,000dwt.