Up 67.8% from 2019
Overseas construction orders awarded to Korean contractors so far this year exceeded US$30 billion.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance announced on Nov. 26 that Korean builders’ year-to-date order intake has reached US$30.2 billion, up 67.8 percent from US$18 billion a year earlier.
It is in two years that order receipts exceeded US$30 billion. The figure is expected to rise further as one month is left until the end of the year.
Orders from Asia (35.6 percent) and the Middle East (34.3 percent) accounted for 69.9 percent of the total. At the beginning of 2020, SK E&C won major construction design projects from Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia -- the US$7.2 million Bukhara oil refinery design deal from Uzbekistan and the US$7.55 million PDH plant design project from Saudi Arabia.
Latin America quickly emerged as a major construction market for Korean builders. Orders from Latin America accounted for 23 percent (US$6.89 billion) of the total in 2020, up from 0.6 percent from the previous year.
By project type, plant orders accounted for the largest proportion of 56.9 percent, followed by civil engineering orders (22.7 percent), architectural orders (15.5 percent), engineering (2.5 percent), electricity facility orders (2.2 percent), and communication facility orders (0.2 percent).