Ship Exports to Grow 22% to $27 Bil. This Year

South Korea is predicted to export ships worth $27 billion this year, up 22 percent from the previous year's $12.15 billion, the Korea Shipbuilders' Association reported Thursday.

This will be the second consecutive year that Korea will record the export growth of ships exceeding 20 percent, the interest group said.

Korea exported ships worth $22.11 billion last year, up 24.8 percent from the previous year, marking the first year seeing the $20 billion mark.

Such a higher export growth is expected to persist next year, too, as Korean shipbuilders are to construct the ships whose orders they won at high prices in 2006, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, domestic shipbuilders are estimated to have exported $14.85 billion worth of ships during the first half of this year, up 30.6% from a year earlier, and constructed 6.27 million gross tons of ships during the cited period, up 8.8 percent from the year before.