Recently, the China Machinery Industry Federation predicted that the overall demand for the machinery industry will remain tight in 2014, and the development of the industry will still maintain its “smooth” tone.

Looking at the economic environment, China will continue to implement proactive fiscal policies and sound monetary policies in 2014, and continue to adjust its industrial structure with the use of forceful mechanisms. Mechanical industry operations will still face weak domestic and foreign demand, and the pressure on industry growth will remain high. However, considering the continuity and stability of the policy, in 2014, the economic operation of the machinery industry still has the basic conditions for maintaining overall stability, and the overall trend of smooth operation in 2013 will continue. At the same time, the further advancement of industrialization, informationization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization will create new consumption and investment needs and expand the international and domestic market space.

From the perspective of the machinery industry itself, favorable and unfavorable factors affecting its development coexist.

Advantageous factors: The increase in financial expenses and interest expenses therefor has significantly declined, and the macroeconomic environment of the company has been improved, which is conducive to corporate control of financial costs. Although the increase in accounts receivable is still greater than the increase in sales during the same period, it has stabilized and stabilized. This shows that although the payment recovery is still difficult, the risk of excessive growth is being controlled. The increase in inventory (especially finished goods inventory) is less than the increase in sales during the same period and has dropped to a relatively low level, indicating that “de-stocking” has achieved significant results. This creates conditions for the recovery of the machinery industry in the future.

Unfavorable factors: Domestic demand is still insufficient. This year's product price index has been sluggish. Although the cumulative orders for key-linked companies from January to October increased, the increase was only 8.58%, indicating that the domestic demand market was weak. The export situation is not optimistic and the overall situation remains weak. From January to October, the total export growth was only 4.62%. Due to the weakening effect of investment pulling, heavy machinery, engineering, machine tools and other industries will still face the situation of weak market demand, and the pattern driven by the automobile industry has not changed.

China Machine Association expects that in 2014, the sub-sectors of conventional power generation equipment, metallurgical and mining equipment, heavy machinery, and general machine tools in the machinery industry will continue to be in a weak demand; the demand for high-end machine tools, robots, and automatic production lines will increase; the construction machinery market will increase. It will be warmer and gradually return to normal. The growth rate of production and sales of automobiles and agricultural machinery will gradually decline, but the large-scale high-end agricultural machinery products market will remain prosperous.