In February 2022, China's construction machinery market index, namely CMI, was 108.36, a year-on-year decrease of 8.76% and a slight increase of 1.06% month on month (according to the judgment standard of CMI, the CMI value in February was still lower than the boom and bust value of 130, approaching the contraction range, and alert to the accumulation of market downside risks).
In February, the year-on-year decline of China's construction machinery market index expanded by 2.36 percentage points, with slight growth month on month, indicating that the domestic construction machinery market still enters the peak season according to the annual cycle. However, according to the feedback of our market monitoring system, the starting point of the annual peak season of all regional markets in China in 2022 is later than that in previous years, and the market generally starts after February 15, A small number of regional markets still had little information even by the end of February.
As of February 25, the operating rate in the northwest was about 52% and that in the Northeast was about 48%, an increase of 1 percentage point over the previous period (February 11); The operating rate in South China is about 59%, and that in Southwest China is about 59%, which is the same as that in the previous period; The operating rate in Central China was about 57%, an increase of 1 percentage point over the previous period; The operating rate in East China is about 56%, an increase of 2 percentage points over the previous period; The operating rate in North China was about 45%, down 1 percentage point from the previous period. On the whole, the operating rate of most end markets is the same as that of the previous month, or increases slightly. There is a decline in a few markets. The spring of domestic construction machinery market in 2022 will come later.
In the CMI index, the inventory index fed back by the manufacturer group increased by 3.5 percentage points compared with the previous period, and the production index increased by 3.3 percentage points; The new order index fed back from the investigation of the agent group decreased by 28.5 percentage points year-on-year, increased by 34.7 percentage points month on month, and the user price index for the first-line market investigation decreased by 1.3 percentage points compared with the previous period.
According to the data released by the excavator branch of China Construction Machinery Industry Association recently, the 26 main engine manufacturing enterprises included in the statistics in January 2022 sold 15607 sets of various excavation machinery products in January 2022, a year-on-year decrease of 20.4%; Among them, 8282 units were sold in the domestic market, a year-on-year decrease of 48.3%; 7325 units were exported, a year-on-year increase of 104.9%. Among them, the domestic market was lower than our expectation of 2584 units, that is, the market continued to deteriorate in January without easing.
From the perspective of market terminals, in the first three weeks of February 2022, the operating hours of excavators monitored by the domestic circulation market decreased by 28.09% year-on-year and increased by 7.12% month on month.
From the demand side, the blast furnace operating rate, coking enterprise operating rate and petroleum asphalt unit operating rate of the iron and steel industry in the main regions are significantly lower than those in the same period last year, indicating that the current domestic investment demand for fixed assets is still weak. In January 2022, Caixin's manufacturing PMI continued to decline. At the provincial two sessions held in January, all localities generally lowered their growth expectations for 2022. Among many measures to stabilize growth, investment is still the main focus. The investment growth target of most provinces is higher than the economic growth target. We hope to seize the "window period" of the state to increase the scale of government investment and moderately advance infrastructure investment. The Ministry of Finance issued in advance the new local government debt limit of 1.788 trillion yuan in 2022, including 328 billion yuan of general debt limit and 1.46 trillion yuan of special debt limit. According to the requirements of the Ministry of finance, the amount of local bonds approved in advance in 2022 should be issued and used in the first quarter to provide financial support for the commencement of the project. At present, local governments have a strong willingness to stabilize growth. After the Spring Festival, Hubei, Hebei, Hunan, Guangdong, Shaanxi and other places successively held signing and commencement activities of major projects in the first quarter. Beijing, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other provinces announced the annual investment plan or list of major projects in 2022.
However, according to the author's understanding from some end markets, although the nominal commencement of major projects is accelerating and funds such as special bonds are gradually in place, the equipment rental funds and contracted project funds of some downstream end customers in 2021 have not been settled, so the willingness to purchase new equipment is still not strong.
By incorporating the excavator sales data and other related index data in January 2022 into the monitoring and prediction data model of China's construction machinery market, we predict that the domestic excavator market sales in February 2022 will be 13637 units, a year-on-year decrease of 44.48%. The forecast data will be updated monthly according to the upstream and downstream economic, investment and sales data and the real-time feedback of the first-line market.
