South Korean shipbuilders kept their lead in global ship order for the third straight month in July after bringing home nearly half of new worldwide orders in the month, data showed.

According to British shipbuilding and marine industry tracker Clarkson Research Services on Tuesday, Korean shipyards bagged combined 10 new ship orders in 270,000 compensated gross tonnages (CGTs) in July, or 49 percent of the total 25 orders in 550,000 CGTs placed in the world last month.

China won the second largest amount of 200,000 CGTs or 11 vessels, and Japan third largest 30,000 CGTs or one ship.

Based on the cumulative new order volume up to July this year, China topped with the largest share of 40 percent, or 4.74 million CGTs. Korea came in second with 3.74 million CGTs (32 percent), narrowing the gap with China to 8 percentage points from 17 percentage points in the end of April. Korea was followed by Japan with 1.45 million CGTs (12 percent) and Italy with 1.14 million CGTs (10 percent).

Cumulative global ship orders from January to July plunged 43 percent on year to 11.82 million CGTs.

Accordingly, global ship order backlog as of the end of July reached 2.25 million CGTs, down 3 percent from the previous month. China sat on the largest order backlog of 27.95 million CGTs, Korea 20.31 million CGTs, and Japan 13.65 million CGTs. Against a year ago, Korea showed a rise of 2 percent, whereas China and Japan saw a decline of 9 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, Clarkson’s new building price index remained unchanged at 131 in July, without a pickup in the price of LNG carriers.

By Kang Gye-man and Lee Ha-yeon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]