Lloyd's List, 16 Jan 2009, Marcus Hand
THE global economy and shipping will not pick-up again until the US and Europe starts buying junk again, is one Singapore-based executive’s blunt summary of the current market outlook.
While global container shipping demand in recent years has certainly been driven by western consumers buying huge volumes of products, the massive plunge in Asian export figures and port volumes imply that it may not be as simple as consumers not buying.
For example, Cosco Pacific reported that its Hong Kong and Singapore terminals saw volumes drop by nearly 25% in December compared with the same month in 2007. China, the world’s factory, saw its exports fall by 2.8% in December 2008 compared with a year earlier while Taiwan and South Korea, registered huge falls in exports of 42% and 17% for the last month of the year.
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