For the machine tool industry, 2012 will be a very difficult year. A few days ago, it was learned from the China Machine Tool Industry Association that due to the reduction of new orders, the association drastically lowered the expected increase in the output value of the industry in 2012, and estimated that the total profit growth rate will further decline.

According to the experts of the Machine Tool Association, after the rapid growth of the machine tool market in recent years, new orders began to fall sharply in May and June 2011, and the trend of slower growth has been formed.

The Association of Machine Tool predicts that the economic operating speed in 2012 will show a declining trend compared with 2011, and the increase in output value will remain at around 15%. Although 15% is still a good growth rate, the output growth rate of the industry in 2011 was as high as 32.1%, which means that the growth rate in 2012 will be significantly slowed down.

According to the survey of more than 50 industrial enterprises conducted by the Machine Tool Association, it was found that in the past two years, the expansion of the company's factory buildings, the huge investment in equipment purchases, and the excessive expansion of production capacity.

Data show that in 2011, the total investment in fixed assets of the machine tool industry was 221.45 billion yuan, an increase of 54.7% year-on-year, of which equipment purchases grew by 54.0% year-on-year.

According to the experts from the Machine Tool Association, “The rapid increase in the amount of investment has ensured the advancement of the process equipment of the machine tool industry, which will help increase the vitality and core competitiveness of the company, but it will also cause problems such as overcapacity and repeated construction. It will inevitably create disorderly market competition and waste of resources."

At the same time, bank loans have been loosened, and capital shortages have not been fundamentally changed; the pressure of exchange rate fluctuations has continued, and the advantages of foreign trade have been weakened; the import of large quantities of foreign products and the apparent increase in pressure on domestic-funded enterprises have also increased the difficulty of the operation of machine tool and tool companies.

Under the constraints of the above factors, the association expects that the total profit growth of the machine tool industry in 2012 will further decline on the basis of 2011.

According to 2011 data, the machine tool industry achieved a profit of 44.58 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 28.0%; the output value margin was 6.7%, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points from the previous year.