SteelOrbis Shanghai
The automobile industry is a field where steel products are widely applied. It's also a special field that has very high requirements on steel products for the purposes of ensuring safety, comfort and many other vehicle standards. As an important steel consuming industry, it's worth one's while to pay great attention to current situation of the automobile industry and to its development trends.
China's automobile industry has been going through a period of rapid growth and development since the year 2000. The combined sales figure of all types of vehicles was 2.07 million in 2000, while by 2005 the figure had increased to 5.76 million. The average yearly growth rate of sales was more than 20 percent. It is estimated that the combined annual sales figure for vehicles will reach 6.85 million with ease in 2006. If this happens,
China will exceed
Japan by 1 million in sales and will thus become the world's number two
automotive vehicle consuming market.
Japan's annual vehicle sales figure has stood at around 5.8 million for several years now.
In recent years, in line with the Chinese economy's rapid development and the increasing demand for vehicles, competition has heated up in the domestic market between the foreign automobile giants and the local automobile companies. From 2003, this fierce rivalry had two negative effects on automobile enterprises - a continuous decline in the sales prices of passenger cars, and also a decline in profits. Currently, the price fight is still continuing in the passenger car market while the prices of other types of vehicle remain relatively stable. Nevertheless, the industrial profits of manufacturers took a turn for the better in 2006. By the end of August,
China's automobile industry had realized profits of more than RMB 50 billion ($6.33 billion), i.e., nearly a 62 percent growth rate over last year. These figures signal a marked improvement in the profits being made by the automobile industry.
Currently, the passenger car market is gaining greatly in significance in
China. With the increase in family incomes, more and more families in
China want to own private cars. These families are not only concentrated in the big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. In fact, automobile markets are growing rapidly in lots of middle-to-small cities all around the country. In some rich middle-sized cities in eastern
China, the passenger car market grew even faster than in the big cities. In 2005, the average growth rate of the passenger car market in these middle-sized cities reached 40-50 percent. In
China, about 600-700 million people live in cities. Of these, only 100 million live in the big cities, while the remainder dwell in smaller cities. Along with the stable and steady growth of the
China economy, a corresponding strong growth in purchasing power may be expected to continue in the long term.
In 2005, the total number of vehicles on
China's roads stood at more than 30 million. It's estimated that the annual output and sales of vehicles in
China will reach 9-10 million units by 2010. This booming automobile market will certainly contribute greatly to all related industries, including the steel industry.