In an interconnected global set-up, economic issues are bound to have wide ramifications and spread rapidly. So it should come as no real surprise that as the world’s economic health has deteriorated, global trade activity has been weakened with it.

In a report that was issued in mid-September, Paul Bingham of Global Insight pointed out that 2008 may not be such a great year for the container shipping industry as a whole. Of course, companies with sound fundamentals and solid track record face fewer problems.

Bingham, the managing director of the research unit’s Trade and Transportation Group, mentioned that he expected to see small sized shipping companies facing effects of economic downturn in the third and fourth quarters. However, there is a glimmer of hope as well. The analyst noted the container trade should start to show real recovery by the end of next year. Bingham added his present assessment was based on

‘a lot of provisos and caveats’

Bingham stated his concern was not really so much with the reasonably strong fundamentals of the overall container shipping industry as with the growing liquidity crunch and the resulting fall in demand. He expected US imports to reduce more severely than originally anticipated.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Containers General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.