By landing more than 60 percent of the world's new shipbuilding orders in November, Korea came in first in the order standings for the fifth straight month in November, beating China. However, global orders for ships in the January-November period of 2020 reached only half of those in the same period of 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global shipbuilding orders amounted to 1.64 million CGTs in November, said Clarkson Research, a British shipbuilding and shipping market analysis agency, on Dec. 8. By country, Korea posted 990,000 CGTs (24 ships), which amounted to 60 percent of the total, followed by China with 600,000 CGTs (37 percent) and Vietnam with 50,000 CGTs (3 percent).

For the Jan.-Nov. period of 2020, China ranked first with 6.67 million CGTs (46 percent), followed by Korea with 5.02 million CGTs (35 percent) and Japan with 1.18 million CGTs (8 percent). Korea’s gap with China was narrowed from 39 percentage points in the first half of 2020 to 11 percentage points in the Jan.-Nov. period.

The gap will be further narrowed when Korea’s orders for LNG tankers and VLCCs won in November are included. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, global orders for ships reached 14.47 million CGTs in the first 11 months of 2020, only 57 percent of the total (25.23 million CGTs) in the same period of 2019.