China's petrochemical industry likely to be under pressure in H2 on sluggish demand, says country's economic planning agency; sector's output has been rising steadily through first seven months of year

Mathew Kearney

BEIJING , September 2, 2013 (China Economic Information Service) – China's petrochemical industry is likely to be under pressure in the second half of this year on sluggish demand, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

The top economic planner in China said Monday in an online statement that foreign demand is unlikely to pick up and domestic demand will be the important factor to the stable growth of the petrochemical industry.

In addition, the NDRC estimated that demand for product oil, fertilizers and pesticides will increase mildly in the second half of this year.

The output of the petrochemical industry has been rising steadily in the first seven months of this year. Meanwhile, product prices fell continuously, investment growth sagged and foreign trade rose mildly.

Chinese manufacturers of chemical raw material and chemical products saw industrial added value rise 11.9 percent year on year from January to July.

The country produced 277.05 million tonnes of crude oil, 171.07 million tonnes of product oil, 9.27 million tonnes of ethylene in the first seven months, up 4.5, 5.6 and 5.4 percent respectively.

The petrochemical industry completed 918.3 billion yuan of investment in the first seven months, up 15.2 percent year on year.

* All content is copyrighted by Industry Intelligence, or the original respective author or source. You may not recirculate, redistrubte or publish the analysis and presentation included in the service without Industry Intelligence's prior written consent. Please review our terms of use.