According to Simon Heaney, Senior Manager, Container Research, Drewry, commented that Drewry remains confident that the world trade will rebound in 2020, but much will depend on developments outside of carriers’ control.
Specifically, Drewry highlights is concerns of a slowing global economy stoked by the ongoing US-China trade war, escalating geo-political tension in many regions of the world and an industry grappling with challenging new emission regulations.
In light of this, Drewry decreased its forecast concerning global port throughput growth in 2019 to 3% from the previous prediction of 3.9%.
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As the times are unpredictable, Drewry is of the opinion that the risk of temporary supply disruption is increasing.
Mr. Heaney noted that protectionism could impact development, considering that the US aims its tariff target at other trading partners. Yet, the trade could go upside down if more manufacturing production is relocated outside of China.
The Asian export powerhouse has progressively reduced its requirement for foreign inputs, choking off demand for intermediate goods, so any shift to less self-reliant economies should give trade a bit of a kick-start.
… Mr Heaney added.
As Mr Heaney concluded, ‘Carriers can be forgiven for not having all of the answers in such times. One suspects that even Nostradamus would throw his hands up in despair; such is the volatility of the leading characters. There will undoubtedly be some errors along the way and the risk of temporary supply issues has undoubtedly been raised, either from too many cancelled sailings or misplaced capacity transfers between trades.’
