Sales of excavators by Chinese manufacturers saw sluggish growth this year as infrastructure investments cooled amid slowing economic growth.

From January through November, 25 Chinese manufacturers sold 215,538 units of the dirt-moving machines essential for large construction projects, according to data released Tuesday by the China Construction Machinery Association, an industry group.

That represented a year-on-year increase of just 15%, well below the 48.4% growth over the same period last year and the 99.2% rise over the first 11 months of 2017.

The sluggish performance is in line with slowing growth in Chinese infrastructure investment, despite efforts by the central government to ramp up funding for large-scale construction projects and jump-start economic growth. Infrastructure investment is one of the key drivers of domestic demand.

China’s infrastructure investment grew 4.2% in the first 10 months this year, a healthier increase than the 3.7% rise during the same period in 2018, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Both of those figures are way below the 19.6% growth seen in the first 10 months of 2017, however.

Read the full story later today on Caixin Global.

Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com)

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