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Impact of new coronavirus on chemical industry

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus is still on the rise. At 2.30 am on January 31, the World Health Organization announced that the new coronavirus epidemic was listed as a public health emergency of international concern.

However, the World Health Organization also stressed that there is no need to take measures to restrict international travel and trade, and WHO does not recommend measures to restrict travel and trade.

What kind of impact did the outbreak have on the Chinese economy?

On the one hand, the offline service industry is the first to be affected, especially the cinema line, tourism, accommodation and catering, offline education, and so on. On the other hand, the outbreak of this epidemic was at a special point in time, which also had a significant impact on industrial production activities.

To this end, we have investigated the clothing, steel, machinery, petrochemical and other industries, involving Guangdong, Hubei, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Hebei and other places. The situation is different in different industries and regions, but in general, industrial production has been affected to varying degrees in terms of labor, orders, inventory, production, and transportation. Unlike the service industry, which is mainly affected by demand shocks, industrial production activities are impacted by both supply and demand, and the situation is even more distressed. Under the impact of the epidemic, the contradiction between supply and demand in industrial production activities was very prominent.

Short-term difficulties facing industrial production recovery

The escalation of the outbreak happened before the Spring Festival, which made employee rework a prominent problem. Taken together, the current recovery of industrial production activities generally faces the following short-term difficulties:

First, industrial production activities may be passively delayed due to issues such as the time limit for resumption of work, the actual rework of employees, protection standards and material conditions during resumption.

Second, current transportation and logistics channels are facing blockages.

Third, the delivery of manufacturing orders will be delayed after this year, and production enterprises will face losses.

At present, foreign buyers are paying close attention to the outbreak in China. However, due to the foregoing reasons, the delivery time of the order at the beginning of the year cannot be confirmed at present, and even a certain percentage will be delayed. If there is still uncertainty in the recovery of industrial capacity in March, it may have a certain degree of impact on new orders for the month, which in turn will affect production activities in the subsequent 2 quarters.

Concerns about order loss are different for different companies and industries. For companies with strong international competitiveness, this worry is not obvious. However, for apparel companies, foreign buyers may place orders in multiple countries at the same time. If China's production recovery is delayed, it may affect the direction of foreign buyers' order allocation.

In addition, although the World Health Organization does not recommend measures to restrict travel and trade, some countries have adopted separate restrictions and raised risk levels. This could also have a negative impact on new orders in China. For example, a foreign supplier should consider adding a Chinese company as a supplier, which requires preliminary negotiation, product testing, factory inspection, proofing, negotiation, and contract signing. Many of the above links involve international purchases of foreign buyers from China. At present, the negotiation process of such new Chinese companies as suppliers may be disrupted or even faced with a suspension, which may affect the potential growth of export orders.

Do a good job of linking out epidemic prevention and control and resuming production

Needless to say, epidemic prevention and control is still the most important task at present. On the premise of ensuring epidemic prevention and control, make arrangements and deployments for production recovery in advance, reduce the mid-term impact of the epidemic, and do a good job of connecting the epidemic prevention and control with production restoration . For this reason, the author's suggestion is: first stabilize the flow of funds, resume logistics as soon as possible, then resume the flow of people as the epidemic situation improves, and resume production activities.

Because the epidemic situation is still developing, some areas can not determine the specific time for resumption of work, but certain technical standards can be given, based on the number of new cases, the number of people moving, the epidemic prevention situation of enterprises, etc., give clear and quantifiable The conditions for resumption of work provide reference expectations for enterprises to resume production. In the case that the epidemic situation has not been completely resolved, local governments should also clarify the protective measures after resumption. In the case that the epidemic situation has not been completely resolved, the government should instruct enterprises to provide necessary protection to employees and provide enterprises with sufficient market supplies of protective supplies.

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