File photo: Buyers from Africa learn about Chinese excavators during the China Import and Export Fair in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province in October 2012. Photo: VCG

Sales of excavators surged in March, as shown by Chinese industry data, which some experts said was a sign that the country is on the road to economic recovery as the government kicks off infrastructure projects to cushion the fallout of coronavirus assault. 

Sales of excavators rose by 11.59 percent year-on-year to 49,408 in March, according to data released by the China Securities on Tuesday. This was a dramatic turnaround from the 50.5-percent sales drop in February. 

The sales surge mostly came from domestic demand. In March, 46,610 excavators were sold in China, up by 11.24 percent on a yearly basis, compared with a decline of 60 percent in February. 

Sany Group, a leading Chinese heavy industry manufacturer based in Central China's Hunan Province, told the Global Times on Wednesday that its excavator sales rose by 14.2 percent year-on-year in March. It didn't provide further details.

Some smaller excavator makers said that their business had returned to normal in March, even though they didn't report outstanding growth in sales. For example, a salesperson at Yoohoo, a private machinery maker based in East China's Shandong Province, said the company sold 50-60 excavators in March, almost the same as last March.

"But we didn't sell one excavator in February, when production and work were halted by the epidemic," he said. 

The machine's popularity is a clear sign of China's intention to boost economic growth via large-scale infrastructure investment, at a time when the outlook for overseas trade is gloomy as the pandemic spreads across the world, experts said.

"About half of China's GDP growth would be driven by investment in 2020, compared with about 30 percent last year," Liu Xuezhi, a macroeconomics expert at the Bank of Communications, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

In March, China announced infrastructure investment plans worth more than 1.3 trillion yuan ($184 billion), including 15 highways and 24 railway projects.  As of March 27, Chinese local governments had disclosed investment plans of 8.4 trillion yuan for 2020, according to media reports. 

"Judging from excavator sales growth, at least some of those infrastructure projects are in progress now," Liu said, adding that delays in sales and resumption of work, as well as equipment updates, could also have worked to boost sales.

But experts remain cautious about the overall performance of China's economy this year. "The excavator sales growth is a sign that China is on the road to recovery and its economic vigor is increasing, but the economy hasn't returned to normal," Liu said. 

He said that China's GDP growth might fall in a wide range of 1-5 percent this year, depending on the evolution of the pandemic. 

Chen Run, an economist at the Institute of Economic System and Management under the National Development and Reform Commission, said that although infrastructure investment is important for domestic growth this year, it is unlikely to become a major driver of economic growth because of the long investment cycle of such projects. 

Li Hongbao, an excavator industry observer, told the Global Times that he's unsure if the March rebound will extend into April, as many of the planned infrastructure projects have not been implemented yet. He also said that the global pandemic would hit China's excavator exports, which account for about 10 percent of total sales.