International Business News – On June 21, the June machine tool order value (determined value) published by the Japan Machinery Industry Association (referred to as the Japanese Trade Union) showed that the order value for China increased by 24% year-on-year to 34.7 billion yen. A year-on-year increase for the first time in 4 months. The reason is that Shanghai and other places have lifted the epidemic control measures. At the same time, orders to Europe were affected by the sanctions on exports to Russia due to the Ukraine issue, and they fell year-on-year for the first time in 16 months.
Zenji Inaba (President of FANUC), the chairman of the Japanese trade union, said at the press conference on the same day: “Although the impact of the epidemic control has not been completely eliminated, the pure electric vehicle (EV) and industrial machinery fields in Asia are still growing keep improving.” The order value for Asia increased by 19.8% year-on-year to 51.6 billion yen, which was higher than the previous year’s performance again after a lapse of two months. Orders to China increased by 4.6% month-on-month, maintaining growth for the second consecutive month. Orders for Chinese cars increased by 99% year-on-year, and investment in pure electric vehicles is very strong.
For Europe, it was 15.1 billion yen, a year-on-year decrease of 16.8%, the first year-on-year decrease in 16 months. President Inaba cited the cancellation of orders for Russia and other places as the main reason, saying that “it is in a de facto embargoed state. New negotiations cannot be conducted, and even if an order is received, it cannot be supplied.” Regarding future forecasts, he believes that “the negative factors this time have a great impact on individual companies and will not be a factor that will significantly reduce July’s performance.” Russia’s cessation of natural gas exports to Germany as a risk to the European economy remains a concern.