South Korea's machine tool industry orders decline and trade surplus expands

The latest statistics provided by the Korea Machine Tool Manufacturers Association (KOMMA) show that in October 2011, new orders for Korean machine tools were 290.288 billion won, down 6.01% from 308.858 billion won in the previous month and 317.15 billion won in October 2010. It also fell by 8.47%, which is the first year-on-year decline in orders for the Korean machine tool industry in the past 22 months. From January to October 2011, the cumulative new orders for Korean machine tools were 3.76 trillion won, an increase of 31.32% over the 2.86 trillion won in the same period in 2010. In October, South Korean machine tool orders fell for the first time in the past 22 months. From January 2010 to October 2011, the trend of new orders for Korean machine tools was also based on KOMMA statistics. In September, South Korean domestic orders were 147.9 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 3.2% , the growth momentum mainly comes from the automobile industry, as well as the expansion of enterprises' investment in plant and equipment; in the same period, overseas machine tool orders amounted to 161 billion won, a significant increase of 45.6% year-on-year. Imports of machine tools continued to decline significantly, and exports continued to rebound month-on-month. In terms of import and export trade, in October, South Korea imported machine tools worth 108 million US dollars, down 24.13% month-on-month and 17.62% year-on-year; exported machine tools were 198 million US dollars, an increase of 3.04% month-on-month and year-on-year. An increase of 20.31%. From January to October, South Korea imported a total of 1.502 billion US dollars worth of machine tools, an increase of 31.48% over the same period of 2010 of 1.142 billion US dollars; cumulative export of machine tools was 1.8 billion US dollars, an increase of 35.38% over the 1.33 billion US dollars in the same period in 2010. In October, the import value of Korean machine tools continued to decline significantly from the previous month, but the export value continued to rebound slightly from the previous month. From January to October 2011, the Korean machine tool trade achieved a trade surplus of US$299 million.