Orders for new ships won by South Korean shipbuilders have plunged over 50 percent from a year earlier so far this year though the country continues to maintain its dominance in the global ship market, the government said Tuesday.

In the first nine months of the year, South Korean shipbuilders reaped orders for 5.2 million compensated gross tons, worth $18.9 billion, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.

The figures for total weight and monetary value dropped 58.6 percent and 56.9 percent, respectively, from the same period in 2011.

The ministry said such large drops were due to a plunge in the overall global orders for new ships, which plunged over 48 percent on-year.

“The total global orders for new ships in the January-September period dropped 48.1 percent on-year to 14.34 CGTs due to years of oversupply and a prolonged recession in the global shipbuilding industry caused by the global economic slowdown,” it said.

The combined global market share of South Korean shipbuilders slipped 5.1 percentage points from 41.4 percent last year to 36.3 percent as of the end of September, the ministry said.

Still, the country continued to be the world’s largest shipbuilding nation, ahead of China, which has a global market share of 34.7 percent.

In the first nine months of the year, South Korea won all of the world’s orders for floating, production, storage and offloading; floating storage offloading; central processing facility; and floating storage unit ships, worth over $3.3 billion in total, according to the ministry.

It also won orders for 15 drill ships and 13 LNG vessels, totaling over $10 billion.

Meanwhile, the ministry said new ship deliveries by South Korean shipbuilders during the January-September period came to an estimate of $32 billion, down 28 percent from a year earlier.

The drop, however, does not reflect the recent drop in new orders as it takes about two to three years for a drop in orders to start affecting the number of ships in stock, the ministry said. (Yonhap News)