International Sea Trade Growth Faster Than Expected

Logistics Insight Asia - Top Story, 9/4/2008

For the first time in the history of global maritime trade, 2007 witnessed the total world merchant fleet exceeding one billion dead weight tonnes (DWT), said experts.

In a seminar on “Solving the Manning Crisis in the Maritime Industry”, held last Thursday in Mumbai, India on the occasion of the 45th National Maritime Day, a research paper revealed that the growth in the international sea trade has been extremely fast.

According to Anil Devli, executive director of Shreyas Shipping and Logistics Ltd, the demand for maritime transport services reached a whooping 30,686 billion tonne miles. The total maritime transport services now have touched 29 trillion tonne miles.

'While the seaborne trade has touched the 7.4 billion tonne figure, it is the Asian trade, especially in and out of China, that has witnessed a rapid growth in the last three years,' he added.

This growth, according to several experts, has led to the jumping of global freight costs from 5.1 percent in 2004 to 5.9 percent in 2005.

Another significant point, which was discussed in the seminar, was the changing trend and perspective of the marine companies. Most of the experts voiced that at present the trend in transportation globally is to go for higher degree of containerisation with focus on multi-modal transport.

According to the statistics presented at the seminar, the cargo channelled through the world container ports has touched a whopping 440 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs).

The share of developed countries hovers around 31 percent of world DWT with developed market economies about 66 percent and the economies in transition about three percent.

And over in Singapore, PSA International Pte Ltd (PSAI) reported achieving a strong 14.8% growth by handling a record 58.85 million TEUs (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units) of containers at its port projects around the world in 2007.

PSA’s flagship terminal in Singapore handled a record 27.10 million TEUs, registering a 13.0% growth over 2006. Volumes at PSA’s terminals outside Singapore were equally impressive and jumped by 16.3% year-on-year, contributing 31.75 million TEUs to PSA’s total throughput for the year.